Jay’s Note: This is part nine 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 eight is here.
Up at 5am. Getting to sleep was the hard part: the boys were scared to stay in their tent with the rain storm rolling through, so they hung out in our trailer for about an hour before heading back out and deciding they enjoyed the rain after all. Then we just had to get through the heat — it was still in the 90s when we went to bed. But sometime in the early morning everything turned. The air cooled off, and I woke up with a blanket on. First time all week. Good luck, too — that means cooler cycling.
We got camp packed up quick and were on the road by about 6:30am again. Jeremy and I got straight to it and hauled all the way through to Perry, the meeting town in the middle of the route, and had pulled pork sandwiches. I tried to grab pizza too, but the vendor wasn’t open yet. It did, however, plant a seed — more on that later.
Another 10–15 miles down the road we stopped at Beekman’s for ice cream. This is a RAGBRAI classic and a must-recommend: homemade ice cream, hand-cranked machines, a line that moves fast. Ten or so miles after that came the Iowa Craft Beer tent, where Jeremy got a light beer and I got an $8 root beer. Festival pricing forgives nothing.
Somewhere in that ride we got on the back of a pace line being led by an e-bike, which was hilarious — the e-cyclists whooping and hollering up front while the rest of us drafted along behind.
Meanwhile, further back in the ride, Rudy came up on an emergency pileup — multiple e-bikers colliding with each other. Terrible to hear. It’s also exactly why I don’t like riding closer to the back of this thing.
We got into Boone before noon, had sandwiches and chips, and hung around camp for a while. The site Sarah got today is fantastic — shaded, right next to flush toilets, and a short walk to the pool. She’s now three for three.
The pool was the afternoon. We walked over from camp, the kids ran the slides, we cooled off for a couple of hours, and Sarah got a nap in. I grabbed a shower right after getting in the water, which at this point in the week counts as luxury.
Back at camp, none of us felt like taking the bus to the vendor area for dinner. So I opened the Domino’s app, let it find my location, quit and reopened it a few times until it picked a spot I actually liked — and ordered pizza for the group. It showed up without issue, delivered straight to a campground in Boone. The seed from Perry, fully grown. Great bonus.
The temperature has cooled off dramatically, and it’s headed for the 60s overnight. Even without shore power, we’ll leave the trailer windows open and be more than comfortable.
Tomorrow: Boone to Marshalltown, 68 miles along the old Lincoln Highway, another relatively flat one. The pool there has a lazy river, which the boys are already negotiating about. We’ll be on shore power at a camp just outside of town, and — most importantly — Beekman’s will be out on the route again. I know what I’m having.