Odoriferous Iowa

There are a few routines I go through at the end of the day. Besides the obvious ones of unloading, I usually check the place's book on places to eat. There were other little fast food joints around last night and it would've been easy to take that route, but if there's one thing I'm getting a little tired of....no home cooked meal. No matter the greasy spoon and how good that guilty fattening food tastes, it gets old after awhile.

So I found some place that sold frozen custard and butterbugers and dinner platters. Apparently it's a chain out here in the midwest called Culver's. So I had a nice fried chicken meal with a two scoop hot fudge sundae (of which I didn't finish it all). It hit the spot and was an out of the ordinary meal.

I wish I could say the night's sleep hit the spot too, but unfortunately, it didn't. It started off good until about 11 when a party of people must've come in. There were doors slamming up and down the hallway and even someone thought my room was there room. So there was a jiggling and pulling of my door a few times until I spoke up. There was no "sorry" uttered.

I eventually passed out again, only to wake up around 4 AM to a blaring TV next door. What really stunk about that was that it was one of those rooms with a pass-through door, so the sound just came right through. Man, so much for a restful night.

So I grabbed a quick bowl of cereal, lugged my stuff down the steps and made several trips to get loaded up and hit the road. There was a beautiful sunrise going on but there were threatening clouds to the south.




There are plenty of "country" smells out here in Iowa. If you're not smelling corn then you're smelling cow manure. Mmm country livin'.

For the most part the ride was pretty easy. It was just over 300 some miles to Dubuque and about half way across the state, 20 turns into limited access road (read 4-lane). But before that, I passed through a bunch of small Iowa towns with some interesting names like Early, Correctionville, and Sac City.

In some of the farmer's fields you can still see standing pools of water. Sometimes large sections of the field were under water and in other places, just small pools of water. Fields weren't the only place where you'd see water.


The horizon looked pretty threatening throughout the day and some of the roads left a little more to be desired but there was plenty to look at up in the sky.


After lunch the clouds disappeared and was sunny for the rest of the ride in. I rolled past Waterloo and saw that the flooding was much more severe. I didn't feel right taking pictures of other people's misery and misfortune, so there's nothing to see here. I went through Independence, Iowa and there is a small river that runs through the town. It was ripping along pretty good and licking the bottom of the bridges in town. I expect to see a lot more of the same tomorrow traveling across Wisconsin.

After fighting through some heavier (and faster) traffic just outside of Dubuque I got to the hotel and met up with my dad. While unloading, I let him "experience" some of my daily rituals. I think he was a little surprised how much weight the bike has been carrying (and I've been carrying at the start and end) each day.

So not too many pics today either, especially from the afternoon. I don't thnk many would find "interstate" pictures too interesting.

Today's Pics

Tomorrow...Manitowoc, Wisconsin in our search for the S.S. Badger!