Jay’s Note: This is part six of a running two-week adventure log for RAGBRAI. Each day I’ll be posting a journal entry and some pictures from our trip that begins in Virginia, lands us in Iowa for a bike ride, and then eventually gets us back to the East Coast. Part five is here.
Up at 7:30am. That’s the last time we’ll be able to do that for a while.
Before we packed out, we met another RAGBRAI group at the campground and chatted for a bit with Jerry — an older competitive cyclist and former marathoner from Michigan, riding his first RAGBRAI with his group. He told us the air quality up there right now is terrible from the Canadian wildfire smoke. The wind is blowing all of it away from the RAGBRAI route this week. How fortunate.
We got out of Kellogg by 9am and headed west for our final big leg: a little over 3 hours from Kellogg RV Park to Onawa, Iowa. The plan was RAGBRAI’s dedicated family campground this year. Then, about 40 minutes out, Andrew texted to ask whether we were staying in town or at the state park — which made me actually look at the state park, where it turned out there were a ton of spots open. The campground had just opened up yesterday. We grabbed one on the spot. Clutch.
So instead of a field in town, we’re at Lewis & Clark State Park, just outside Onawa on Blue Lake. Electric and water at the site, and — bonus — showers and flush toilets. Yet again lucky. The one oddity: they mowed down all of the trees on our stretch for some reason, so it’s a little apocalyptic out here. We’ll trade shade for shore power.
After we set up we met up with our friend Andrew, then went into town for food. Most of us had loose meat sandwiches, which — if you’ve never had this Iowa tradition before — I highly recommend. The pool was closed while we were in town, so we didn’t get to use it, but there’s always tomorrow!
The rest of the afternoon was logistics: finding water, finding toilets, and getting the gear staged for the whole ride ahead.
Tomorrow the ride actually begins: 59.3 miles from Onawa to Harlan with 3,506 feet of climb, straight through the Loess Hills. Back in the packing-day post the forecast said 105 degrees for day one. It now says 91 and partly sunny. We’ll take it. We’re getting up at 4:30 so the cyclists can beat the heat and the SAG wagon can beat the crowd into Harlan — and then have a fun rest of the day.
Early to bed at 9, up at 4:30. See you on the road.