Day Thirty Four - IOWA!

Now that we're past the BMW MOA Rally, we are starting to hit our stride. We rolled out of the hotel parking lot at 7:00 AM sharp this morning, under partly cloudy skies and a coolish 68 degrees. Actually very similar to yesterday's conditions, just without the wind - YAY!

We would spend much of the day zig-zagging north and west in Iowa almost to the very north-west most corner before heading south from there. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Day 34 Track

Our first  objective today was Parkersburg IA. That would be for the I've Been Everywhere tour and we got it at 7:30 AM.

I've Been Everywhere Man - Parkersburg

From there we continued north and west, but the skies were looking ominous the more north we got. This next photo was taken on Hwy 3 westbound.

Sky looks like trouble brewing...

It was a long 161 mile haul to our next objective, and we were playing cat and mouse with the rain much of the way. At one point, as we were heading north on Hwy 169 heading into Algona, the clouds were dark and about a mile short of our turn to the west it started to rain lightly. We knew the turn was coming up and it looked better in that direction so we hung in there and sure enough - just a quarter mile after we turned west we were out of the rain! With all the cloud cover, the temps were stuck at 68 degrees, though it didn't even feel that warm. We were sure glad we had on an extra layer of gear.

I've Been Everywhere Man - Spirit Lake

We got the Spirit Lake photos at 11:30 AM. We stopped in town for fuel but decided to press on before stopping for lunch. It was about another hours ride to our next waypoint for the IBEW - Little Rock. The post office there was so small we almost missed it!

I've Been Everywhere Man - Little Rock

By now, I was getting hungry. The GPS search didn't show much but Larry's paper maps promised something in Rock River which was just another 15 miles. It was also the extreme corner of today's route where we would finally turn south and hopefully, out of the clouds for good. We didn't actually find much in Rock River, but there was a "drive-in" that had burgers and fries and we settled for that. It did sprinkle some while we were inside, but soon stopped and we were rolling again with one more dark cloud to clear. We got out from under that with just a couple of drps and then the sun came out, the temps warmed into the 70's and we grew big smiles!

We were now heading south on US-75 and headed for Ireton, IA. Ireton will be the "i" in "Airheads". We get there at 2:05 PM We would shed our extra gear layer here too. Note the blue sky in the photo below!

Ireton, IA

Blue skies, Green fields and all is good!

It would be a short 38 mile hop on "K22" to get down to Sioux City - our next waypoint for the I've Been Everywhere Tour.

I've Been Everywhere Man - Sioux City

It would take us just another 10 minutes to get over to the Missouri River - which is also the state border and Nebraska is another I've Been Everywhere Man waypoint.

I've Been Everywhere Man - Nebraska

From there we would run down to and then 10 miles west on US-20 to get our next waypoint - Jackson for the Presidential Tour.

Presidential Tour - Jackson

Now we backtrack on US-20 a bit to get on US-75 southbound again to make the 60 miles down to Winslow - our next I've Been Everywhere Man waypoint. Just when I thought we couldn't get any smaller post office than Little Rock - this one shows up!

I've Been Everywhere Man - Winslow

We're almost done for the day - just one more waypoint - Arlington for the "A" in Airheads of the TS30 tour. That's just a short 20 mile hop from here and finally we are getting to our hotel for the night in Fremont, NE. We get in at 5:24 PM having captured NINE waypoints for today!

Today's Stats: 435 miles in 10:31 elapsed time, 8:30 saddle time.