Day 36: Dyersville to Muscatine, Iowa

If you haven’t already, check out the quiz on Friday’s post. I’ll be posting the answers tomorrow evening, so today is your last chance to comment with your answers to win a prize!

We were on the road before seven today, hoping to get ahead of the heat. It was a long, hot day of riding through cornfields, cornfields, and fields where they grow corn. The hills were mostly rolling and mild today. Rather than riding through the “Field of Dreams” field this morning, we started off cutting east on a dirt trail that cut straight to our first town and cut a few miles off what we thought would be a hundred mile day. After getting into Farley, we headed south on mostly quietly country roads. We stopped for lunch in Lowden, where we heard a little bit about the experiences of running a rural bar in Iowa. The bartender seemed to wish us well as we continued south for our last 40 miles toward Muscatine.

The last few miles we followed the river into town, and are staying at a hotel right on the river, living a bit of the high life tonight. We enjoyed an excellent smoked pork loin and checked out the local brewery.

Tomorrow we will head across the river into Illinois, and start another eastern push across our next two “I” states.

By the numbers:
Miles traveled: 94
Total climbing: 3130 ft
Average temperature: 83F
Water bottles emptied: 14
Bagels carried across Iowa: 5

Ed rolling down one of our hills today.

 Enjoying a drink at the end of the day.

 On a trail headed into Muscatine.

There is a button factory here in town. Unfortunately, it closes at four so we didn’t get a chance to learn about the exciting history of buttons. But, we did take this photo.

 Somewhere in Iowa.

On the Heritage trail toward Farley this morning.