No Sun, No Wind!

Reporting from Tipton, Iowa. Day 6 of riding is complete and it was another good day.

We were on the road by 5:45 AM with 64 miles to get us to Tipton. Now if you look on a map you would see that it is only about 20 miles between North Liberty, where we were last night, and Tipton. However the RAGBRAI route took a scenic, rural tour north, east, and then back south into this fine town!

One of the highlights today was our bratwurst and sauerkraut breakfast at 7:30 AM! A great way to start the day, although Bob reported that he has some reminders of that sauerkraut later in the morning! One of the small towns we rode through, Lisben, processes sauerkraut and they have a big sauerkraut festival in August. In the daily newspaper that is published for riders, the Lisben folks were promoting their brats and kraut so we decided that would be our breakfast after 21 miles of riding. It was yummy!

The wind was a non-factor today which made for much more pleasant riding. Additionally, we again rode under a cloud cover, and just now, 3:45 PM, the clouds are starting to break up. These last 2 days have been "Pam B" riding days-cloudy and temps in the low 70's! It has been great.

One sight along the route today that surprised us was as we were riding along, a pick-up truck slowly moved by us, pulling a trailer with a huge, fake cow in it. Now by huge I mean 10 tall!! Later, when were rode into the town of Mt. Vernon, there was this cow with a big sheet hanging of its side, advertising something!

We are camped in a beautiful city park and have a site right next to a shelter where we can sit at picnic tables and store our bikes under cover. That is one advantage to starting the daily ride early in the morning and moving right along-better camp choices! The new city aquatic center is also in the park so we went for a swim, did a few waterslides and took showers. Perfect!

We are in downtown right now and will go to a church dinner for some kind of pasta. Sally and I visited a vendor booth here in town where corn yarn is for sale. Interesting stuff!

Later this evening, we will have our "Last Night Out" beer in the Beer Garden, but I don't imagine any of us will be up real late.

Tomorrow we finish in Le Claire- I can almost smell the river now!