I just bought a digital camera and on Saturday May 12th I decided to document my ride from the Mississippi-river hills in East Central Iowa. This part of Iowa is far from flat but a lot of the ground is still farmed.

The weather forecast called for no rain so I loaded my bike and trailer and set out on a half century. Twenty eight miles in to the ride it started to rain. It rained on me for the last twenty two miles. I put on my rain gear and tucked the camera away. These photos are from that first, sunny, twenty eight miles.

I need practice with the camera but I hope you enjoy the photos. Notice the cloudless blue skies at the start of my ride and the clouds forming in the last few pictures compared to the sunny sky.

Even with the rain it was a great ride.

Great stuff!

Man those are some EMPTY roads. Looks like very nice riding.

Why did you haul all the bags and trailer, getting ready for a tour?

I have four short tours planned for this summer. Three of the tours will be four day self contained tours.
I’ll also be doing the week long Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI) for my 16th consecutive year. However, I won’t be doing RAGBRAI self contained and I won’t be on this bike.

Nice pics! When I was younger I lived in Minnesota and later in Missouri, and thus spent a lot of time driving through that area. Thanks for the visual reminder of the peaceful beauty of eastern Iowa!

Nice pictures.

What happened to the cars?

Great pics - Thanks for sharing!

Were the cows lying down the first clue of the weather change? ...whenever I see more than half the herd down, it's usually time to double check that I have the rain gear.

Not many people know the connection between cows lying down and weather change. I’m not a farmer but my grandfather and grandmother were.

On the risk of Iowans being further stereotyped…….
Years ago my grandmother told me when cattle are lying down it’s going to rain. It is unbelievable how accurate this is. The cattle were 100% more reliable than the meteorologist on that particular day.

A few people enquired about the low traffic numbers during my ride. An Iowa bike-map shows traffic on the route I rode as being traveled by 0 to 700 vehicles over a twenty-four hour period.

Beautiful scenery, but I thought it was flat in Iowa. Funny how those weather forecasters are so often wrong. From your first pictures with the perfectly clear sky, it's hard to believe that rain developed later on, but I've had that happen more times than I can remember.

You just made it considerably harder for me to get any work done today. I'll soon be heading home to central Iowa for ~1 month before starting grad school after spending the last year in NC and taking up road biking. I'm just all the more excited now to explore the backroads with 4 weeks of no work, school or other responsibilities.

Could you share some route info and a link to the Iowa bike map?

Clonechemist,

Here is the Iowa bike map I used.

http://www.iowadotmaps.com/msp/pdf/bikemap.pdf

You should checkout this whole site. It has county maps also. You'll be able to check out the county you will be in. However, the county maps don’t have traffic counts on the roads.

I added the section I was riding. I traveled on D61, Y31, E17 & 136.
The photos are from the less seldom traveled section of the loop. The last section (136 in blue) is a state highway and a little more traveled but at 701 – 1, 500 vehicles per day it’s still pretty low.

Enjoy your time back in Iowa.