Jay’s Note: This is part four 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 three is here.
KOA campgrounds are like going to a Chili’s: sufficient. The Buckeye Lake KOA did the trick. Clean, quiet, good power hookups, and good water access.
This blog post title brought to you by our friend Mark Rush.
We woke up around 7:30am and took our time heating up water, showering, and getting ready for another long day of driving. After packing up the tents, kitchen, and gear, we got out a little after 9am, took a quick stop at a Flying J for coffee and gas, and then got on the road.
Campground teardown note: One and a half hours between waking up and hitting the road isn’t bad all things considered, though during RAGBRAI we’ll be aiming for an hour. We usually wake up around 4:30 to get on the road at 5:30. That helps for two reasons: 1) it gives the cyclists a chance to beat the heat, and 2) our SAG wagon (my wife, Sarah, and our kids) is able to get into the next town faster for a great campsite. More on that later, but beating the charters and the carnival of other SAG vehicles is a challenge.
I digress. The ride time estimate today was 6 hours and 40 minutes. We got to our first stop, a Love’s just outside of Indianapolis, around 12:30pm CST — lunch (more sandwiches) and a stretch, a tank of gas, and a few Lunchables to bribe a picky kid into eating.
After Love’s, we made our way west through Champaign, IL and then north up to Starved Rock. The Rock is a special place for our family. When we lived in Illinois we’d take a two-week family trip there every year during the summer, and another long trip during the winter when they’d put the Christmas lights out. In addition to the great hiking, there’s also supposed to be nice cycling in the area. I might try that tomorrow.
We arrived in town at around 5pm and stopped at our first Casey’s of the trip! For those of you who know RAGBRAI, you know.
Then got to Starved Rock at around 5:30pm, quickly set up camp, and then headed over to the lodge for dinner. The lodge was built by the CCC starting in 1933, and sits on a bluff overlooking the park and the Illinois River in the distance. The two-sided limestone fireplace in its Great Hall is the largest fireplace in Illinois. Their barbecue is an obvious choice for dinner.
After that we got back to camp, I set up our Starlink, and we piled into the trailer to watch Monk — season five, starting with “Mr. Monk and the Actor,” the one where Stanley Tucci plays a method actor studying Monk for a movie. Tucci was one of the three finalists for the role of Monk itself, which is why they cast him as the actor playing Monk — and the episode won him an Emmy. There’s something ridiculous and perfect about beaming a twenty-year-old detective show down from orbit into a campground in the woods.
Tomorrow, we’ll spend some time hiking around camp and eating at a few local places that we love. Then our friend Rudy will make his way over to meet up with us, and then we’ll head out to Kellogg RV Park — not a fancy spot, but a RAGBRAI tradition for us.
Reading for the day: Yet another donut hole of a reading day. Our travel days shorten soon, so I’ll have more time for it then.