Day 64- Iowa

I am learning a lot about geography on the trip. For instance, today I cross into Iowa and the first town I will come to is named Missouri Valley. This strikes me as an odd name for a city since it is not anywhere near Missouri and I don’t think the Missouri River is any where near here either. Wrong!

It turns out the Missouri River makes up the entire western boundary of Iowa! It does’t look anything like the portion of the Missouri I am familiar with at it’s headwaters in Montana. It is a big, slow river that you cannot see anywhere close to the bottom. Both because it is deep and because it is brown water. A far cry from the clear trout bearing river I know.

I crossed the river about 2 miles into today’s ride and was now in Iowa.

I was not amused when the adequate shoulder I was riding on changed to a very wide, large aggregate gravel shoulder! I was going to have to find a new route other than Hwy 30 if this continued. I was going to have to deal with it for a while though. I needed to get to the Iowa Welcome Center in Missouri Valley to get an Iowa map to see what my options were though. And it was 13 miles away. Luckily, a narrow paved shoulder appeared after only a few miles. Not great but better than gravel. Whew.

In Missouri Valley, I got my map. Actually, I got a nice Iowa Hwy Cycling map! It shows the traffic volumes and shoulder widths for all of the hwys and county roads. It is a great resource. Hwy 30 has a 4-6 foot shoulder for much of the way through Ames so I will maintain course for the time being.

After some initial rolling hills, I find myself riding through the now familiar flat terrain of the rural Midwest farm belt. I am also riding in the now familiar heat and humidity. There is an interesting phenomena. I am not very up on my thermodynamics, but I am a lot cooler when I am riding than when I stop! When I stop, I just start sweating more and feel the heat more intensely.

My goal for the day is Denison, IA. It is about 55 miles and a decent sized city. The camping options are a little unclear. When I got there, it was about 5:30. It was still hot and I decided to go ahead and ride on to Carroll, IA. It was 27 miles past Denison and about 2 hours more riding but there was a State Park to camp at. It sounded like a good deal to me.

I got to Swan Lake State Park about 7:45. There was still plenty of daylight left so my plan worked out fine. 87 miles for the day was a bit much so I will be curious how I feel tomorrow. It makes 529 miles in the last 7 days. I am pretty sure that is an all time record for riding in one week for me.