47.5 miles cycling, 1203′ of climbing (2825.3 total) – to read from the beginning, click here.
Louise almost bested her dinner with the breakfast she prepared for us, and then she sent us off with a care package of leftover salmon, fresh tomatoes, Caprese and cuke salads, and bread and cheese for lunch. It was a thankfully short day of 33 miles to Des Moines ahead of us with much of it on the Racoon River Valley Trail.
As you can see though, we added another 15 miles tooling around Des Moines — north to a concert in a park (very sparsely attended) and then to the sculpture garden, the state Capitol building, and the East Village on the edge of the Iowa State campus. After our tour, we headed to our next Warmshowers hosts, Mindy and Scott and Scott’s son Jackson.
After we settled in, Scott made us an amazing veggie lasagna, and we had a lovely dinner and conversation — Mindy is a professional bike planner, having worked for the city and state and now doing it as a consultant all over the country. If you know of my work with CentreBike, you know we had a lot to talk about. Scott works as an actuary at an insurance company and had his own interesting stories about that work. And of course, touring stories. RAGBRAI, New Zealand, and lots more.
We also learned from our last host Louise and reiterated by Mindy and Scott, that the “Register Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa” was started by two reporters from the Iowa Register. We decided we were doing the “DAPAGBRAI” and were halfway through.
We had a very restful night after our short day, prepping us for tomorrow’s ride to Iowa City.
