Thanks to a nice sleep at the motel, I was up early and ready to start on the Great Rivers route! Except when I opened the door to step out it was still gloomy and looking like another thunderstorm was going to roll in soon. So I went back inside, double checked the motel's check out time, and laid back down in all my wonderful cycling gear.
Eventually the storm passed, but now it was getting close to 10am and I needed to get on the road! About 20 miles outside Muscatine there was a route split, I could choose a gravel bypass for 5 miles or road for 9. I picked the gravel since I was running late, and kept riding, waiting for the gravel... waiting... waiting... stopped and double checked the phone to make sure I didn't accidentally go off on some random road, and I was almost done with the "gravel" section... looks like it's been paved, huzzah! Oh yeah, it seems like there are a lot of gravel roads in Iowa, all the farm roads I saw going off the main roads were all gravel, I'm guessing that's why the map doesn't route me down a bunch of those instead of the heavier trafficked main road.
I reached Oakville hoping for some lunch, the map says they have a grocery store and restaurant, but this town was dead, all the store fronts on its Main Street were all closed. Boo! I made my way to the town park and dug into my reserves, which consisted of a can of chili, some combos, and a granola bar.
With some food in my belly I made my way to Burlington and crossed the bridge back into Illinois, following the ACA route. Well, that was a short visit to Iowa. One thing to note is that there's only bridges that cross the Mississippi in the larger towns, so those are the ones you need to use to cross on a bike, but each bridge holds a 4-lane road and they have pretty heavy traffic. I had to get on an interstate type road and then pedal over them. It feels weird, like I'm cycling on I-81 or something... at least they have wide shoulders (filled with some many pieces of 18-wheeler tires)
It was getting a little later in the day when I finally made it to Dallas City and had to find my host's, Jess and Doris Lionberger, house. As I was making my way to their house, a car slowed down beside me, with Jess inside, telling me I was going the right way and that his place was only 2 more miles ahead.
As I got to their house I was immediately greeted with cold lemonade, a shower, and dinner! Jess and Doris went above and beyond, they had so much good home cooked food and kept my glass filled with cold lemonade, I felt like a king! Jess and Doris are an amazing pair, Jess was an agricultural engineer & old school computer programmer turned farmer. Doris wrote code for agriculture programs they made and sold computers back when CPUs were pushing 2 megahertz! They are both excellent cyclists and are heavily involved in the Burlington bike club, which has their own bus and bike trailer. I could go on, but this newspaper article on them probably explains it better --> http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/Faces-061712
After getting full up on food and good conversation, it was getting late and I hit the hay, thinking I should probably get a rest day in here pretty soon.
Start: Muscatine, IA
End: Dallas City, IL
Distance: 75.10 miles
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