August 2, 2021

Morris, IL to Oglesby, IL

We woke on our first morning of the tour and got on the road early from our scenic campsite in Morris, IL. We only planned to do about 40 or so miles to Starved Rock State Park in Oglesby, and we biked like it was a ride around the block. We took our time, stopped at a coffee shop and got some loose-end-tying and route planning done, and eventually rolled into Starved Rock in mid-afternoon. I should say, we rolled alllll the way down to the Visitor’s Center down a nice, steep hill, and then had to bike all the way back out to the campground when we found out that it wasn’t down there – not my finest moment of map-reading.

The campsite was full, and relatively noisy, but we still had a pretty nice evening relaxing nonetheless. I played my mandolin and finished a painting I’d been working on, and Alyssa played her ukulele. We showered, ate dinner, and retired to the tent.

Before long, we discovered that we hadn’t accounted for something – raccoons. Alyssa heard some rustling outside the tent and poked her head out the fly to find a raccoon dragging her pannier of food into the woods. She chased it down, and we moved all our food bags into the tent – or so we thought. In my sleepy state, I grabbed the wrong bag, and before long, the raccoons had pounced on the real bag and tried to bite their way into it before Alyssa saved the day again (I was apparently asleep by this point). The only damage was a few bite-holes in my brand new pannier, but that’s what I get for leaving it where they could get it I suppose!

August 3, 2021

Oglesby, IL to Annawan, IL

After a night of fitful sleep at the devilish little hands of the raccoon population of Starved Rock, it was hard for me to get moving in the morning. We intended to do about 80 miles or so to Geneseo, IL, but I didn’t get on the road until 8:30 or so. Then, while descending the very first hill, the bridge over the Illinois River, I hit a fishing hook that went clean through one side of my tire and out the other at about 35 miles per hour.

Alyssa went on ahead to hit a grocery store we’d planned to visit in the nearby town of Peru, and I stayed behind to fix my flat. After several hours though, I realized that the damage it’d done as I’d attempted to slow to a stop was too much to patch, and that my spare tube had a faulty valve, so I was left on the side of the road with a flat tire and no manner of fixing it. I rolled it down into the small town of North Utica, and waited by the e-bike rental kiosk to see if someone might be able to help.

Sure enough, a very nice man named Terry came by, and after a short chat he offered to drive me the 10 miles or so to Peru so that I could meet up with Alyssa, who at this point had bought me a couple tubes from the closest ‘real’ bike shop. Terry was an interesting guy – Terry loved unions, hated the government, loved guns, and didn’t like cops very much. He told me that his entire life, he changed careers every 2-3 years because he got bored easily. So at this point he’d been a security guard, a short hop pilot, worked in a machine shop, and a bunch of other things. Also, he was very nice and had a car large enough to carry my bike with ease.

Reunited, Alyssa changed my flat for me (because at this point I’d done it about 6-7 times in the process of trying to get rolling) because she is the nicest, and we finally hit the road for our supposed long day at about 12:30.

Nevertheless, we hustled hard to make it to our planned destination. We transitioned from the I&M Canal Trail to the Hennepin Canal Trail and biked until nearly sunset in order to try to make our goal. The trail was beautiful but often a little frustrating to ride on – sections were completely overgrown, some sections were recently laid very loose gravel, etc. We didn’t end up getting all the way to Geneseo, but we did make it almost to the end of the Hennepin Canal Trail in Annawan, IL. We set up camp at one of the primitive sites along the canal and quickly ate dinner during sunset. There, we met our second especially interesting character of the day – Alex, a woman from Boston who was more or less randomly selected to live in and drive a converted short school bus for a year as a weird marketing ploy for the company that refinishes the buses into live-in vans. She was lovely dinner company and had a very cute puppy, which was a nice way to end a long day. We crashed out in the tent as soon as the sun went down – I was beat.

August 4, 2021

Annawan, IL to Davenport, IA

Trying to refocus a little bit, we got on the road nice and early the following morning. We left the campsite by a few minutes before 6, and popped across I-80 into the town of Annawan for a quick breakfast at the Purple Onion, an extremely adorable and very delicious spot in the little downtown area there. We ate our breakfast (and a couple oatmeal scotchies, because cookies are breakfast) and kvetched with the patrons of the restaurant. We had a lovely conversation with some local semi-retired farmers, and another with a couple from the southwest suburbs returning from a golf trip in the Quad Cities. All very lovely people, and a lovely way to start our day.

We got on the road for real, for what was not actually a very long day – our goal was our first Warmshowers of the trip in Davenport, IA. For those who don’t know – Warmshowers is a site more or less like Couchsurfing, but catering primarily to bicycle weirdos like us. Folks let you sleep in their house and use their shower, and it’s generally a “so there is still good in the world I guess” type exchange.

We finished off what remained of the Hennepin Canal Trail (which was slightly less overgrown and difficult the farther west you took it) and made a quick Walmart pitstop before heading into the Quad Cities area proper.

The Quad Cities was immediately pretty charming – lots of bike paths, lots of bridges, lots of cute business districts on both sides of the Mississippi River. We crossed the river past the Rock Island Arsenal, and rolled into our 2nd state of the trip, Iowa! We stopped to take some pictures as we waited for a long freight train to pass and then met our Warmshowers host for the night, Dustin.

Dustin runs a printshop in downtown Davenport, IA, and was a lovely host. He let us use his shower, which was definitely immediately necessary when we arrived. He helped us run an errand to the pharmacy, he gave us a driving tour of the Quad Cities area, and then gave us a bunch of great suggestions on what to do locally and how best to bike around. We joined him and his girlfriend Jodi for dinner at a delicious Mexican restaurant that served birria with the consomme on the side, a thing I’ve never gotten to experience together like that. I was surprised it happened in Davenport, Iowa! If you’re not familiar, birria is worth a pair of google searches – first, for what it is; second, for the nearest birrieria near you.

We crashed on the floor of Dustin’s roomy print shop, and enjoyed air conditioning for the first time in several days. What a luxury!

August 5, 2021

Davenport, IA to Walcott, IA

We woke up after a nice night’s sleep in Dustin’s print shop in downtown Davenport and got on the road straight away. We saw the hill we needed to go up the night prior and spent the intervening 12 hours dreading biking up it and away from the Mississippi River, but it was actually fairly easily dispatched. Maybe the vigor of our legs in the morning, who knows.

From the get-go, we planned to have a short day. We were beat from all the rough trail riding and gravel back roads, and wanted a day to relax indoors, so we booked a motel about 15-20 miles from where we spent the night prior. We arrived after some very sketchy gravel road riding and waited until the check-in time at the McDonalds across the street.

The room secured, we spent the day and evening relaxing and enjoying being off the bikes a little bit. While Alyssa made a phone call, I walked across I-80 to the World’s Largest Truckstop and took in the sights. For real though, the Trucking Museum is pretty awesome and worth a quick visit if you stop in to get gas.

August 6, 2021

Walcott, IA to Iowa City, IA

We had a medium day ahead of us, so we got out of the motel and on the road fairly early. One of Alyssa’s former coworkers has a nephew who lives in Iowa City (only a couple degrees of separation, really!), who graciously agreed to put us up.

Leaving Walcott, we realized that Google Maps was recommending that we spend all damn day biking on loose gravel farm roads, something which neither I nor Alyssa wanted to do at all after the riding of the past week. So we detoured south to Highway 6 and spent more or less the entire day taking it towards Iowa City – mostly with a nice comfortable shoulder.

As we approached The City of Iowa City (which is what they really call it on the municipal services… why not just “Iowa City”??) the rolling hills of Iowa made themselves increasingly apparent. Our last couple miles into Iowa City had both of us sweating buckets as we coaxed our heavy, heavy bikes up hills at like 5 mph in the blazing Iowa sun.

Paul, our Iowa City plug, met us at his apartment to let us in, pointed out the shower and laundry, and give us some quick recommendations for how to spend our evening before returning to work. We cleaned ourselves up, and then headed out to enjoy the sights.

I hadn’t been eating enough, so I made up for it by eating dinner twice as we patronized multiple places from Paul’s recommended spots list. A good burger from a nice spot with a rooftop patio, and a plate of fried chicken from what was basically a Chicago-themed Irish bar cured what ailed me for sure.

The downtown area of Iowa City was having a street festival, which is apparently a Friday Thing during the summer there. We listened to some live music, and helped out with a sidewalk chalk public art project to round out our evening. There’s also a bunch of really cool interactive zoetrope things, where you push a lever back and forth and an archway of sequential images rotates above you, animating from your movement. It was a lovely evening out, for sure.

August 7, 2021

Rest day

We’d planned to take a ‘real’ rest day in Iowa City, where we didn’t even get on the bike (Alyssa still did, but pretty close!), because we were lucky enough to be graced with the company of some of our best friends. Specifically, my lifelong best friend Doug and his partner Maddi, who drove all the way out from Chicago to hang out with us before we disappeared over the horizon.

Alyssa woke up and cooked breakfast for Paul and I to start our day, which was absolutely delicious. Then we took the bus back downtown (and then some) to meet Doug and Maddi at Big Grove Brewery. We spent the entire day out on the town with them, hitting up multiple drinking establishments that we’d sourced from random local recommendations. It never hurts to ask “hey, what’s a great sketchy dive bar here?”.

Some highlights included Gabe’s, a music venue I’d heard of from tour posters I’d seen, where we shot a few games of pool. Also an enthusiastic hit was Dave’s Fox Head Tavern, a bar that apparently Kurt Vonnegut once patronized – it was an absolutely perfect bar experience, regardless.

We ended the night at a nearby joint called Deadwood, and Alyssa took off back to Dave’s Fox Head to complete a portion of a project she’s designing for herself – a series of oral histories of people she meets along the route of this trip. I finished off the night by intermittently watching the end of the 2020 Olympics and Indiana Jones movies with Doug and Maddi.

Doug and Maddi coming out was a really, really nice break on our rest day. It was so comforting to see people we loved, and to spend some time exploring the cute college town of Iowa City together.

Paul was already sleeping by the time we got home that night, and soon enough so were we. Thank you Paul, for being so generous with your home and all your excellent recommendations!

August 8, 2021

Iowa City, IA to Brooklyn, IA

We got up somewhat early to try and get some miles in before it got too hot. Our plan for the day was to camp at a small park just west of Grinnell, which was a roughly 80 mile plan.

We made a pitstop at the HyVee on the way out of town to stock up on calories, and hit the road. Immediately, we saw and felt what Iowa’s landscape was most famous for – the long, rolling hills. West of Iowa City, they increased in frequency and size, and to our Illinois-flatland-acclimated legs, represented a meaningful decrease in our average speed. However, we soldiered on along Highway 6.

In the middle of the day, we passed through the Amana Colonies, a little American oddity. Originally an intentional community of German-speaking religious folks (and maybe still?), they’re a collection of quaint towns in central Iowa that these days represent more of a tourist attraction than a communal living experiment. Still, pretty neat. We stopped to take a short break on the porch of a bed and breakfast in Homestead, one of the towns that make up the colonies.

All hills considered, we made pretty good time. But by the end of the day, we realized that it might make more sense to tweak our plan a little bit. Originally, we were trying to get from Iowa City to Des Moines in 2 days, but having encountered the hills and the weather forecast calling for heat indexes almost reaching 110F, we decided to split it into 3 days. As a result, we changed our plan for the evening and landed in the postcard-ready Small Town America ideal of Brooklyn, Iowa. As we came into town, an older gentleman named Don gave us tourist pamphlets about the town’s offerings, and pointed us to all the good spots to get some culture. For lack of a police department to ask, we went down to the Casey’s General Store and asked some passersby and employees where to set up camp – and they all pointed us to the public park in the center of town. So we did! But not before checking out the main sights in town, primarily the copper statue of John Wayne, who apparently spent some time there as a youth.

We relaxed in the park, washed up as best we could, had a cooking-free dinner, and retired to bed.

August 9, 2021

Brooklyn, IA to Newton, IA

We woke in the morning pretty early, to try and once again beat the heat if we could. Wasn’t the greatest sleep of all time in the public park, what with the cars driving by and the general concern for existing in the public space like that, but nonetheless we got out and on the road in good time. But not before trying our first slice of Casey’s Breakfast Pizza, a thing I was skeptical of but was actually pretty good!

We’d lined up a relatively average length day with a host from Warmshowers on the western edge of Newton, Iowa. The morning went easily, and we crushed the first 15 miles to the small college town of Grinnell, where we made sure to stop and check out the Louis Sullivan Jewel Box Bank building they have there – only one of eight, they’re all architecturally beautiful creations by the mentor of Frank Lloyd Wright, and this was no exception.

While checking out the building, we were approached by a man who saw our bikes and stopped to say hi – Craig runs the bike shop in town, and asked if we needed anything (even though the shop was closed that day!). He helped us along greatly though with insider knowledge on good routes to take for the next few days, and helped make a connection with some folks with whom we could stay in Des Moines in a few days from then. He even knew our hosts for the night that night, too!

We rounded out our Grinnell experience by popping over to the A&M Cafe for breakfast, where we had some delicious food and more importantly, three slices of VERY delicious pie apparently made by their expert pie man, 80-something year old Merle. The strawberry rhubarb crunch was heavenly.

Having sunk probably too many cooler hours in the town of Grinnell, we got back on the road and tried to crush the remaining 30 miles for the day as readily as the first 15. Only now, the hills were even steeper and longer, and the sun and humidity were absolutely unrelenting. We sweated off all of our sunscreen multiple times, and ended up getting some unfortunate sunburn. It was hard going on a very, very hot day.

As we came into the town of Newton, we were approached during a quick break by Larry and Tish (or Trish? I couldn’t quite hear. Sorry if I misattribute this kindness!). They ALSO knew our hosts for the evening, and helped us find the easiest, flattest route through town and helped correct our Google Maps leading us to the wrong address for the night. They even led us in their car all the way through town like our personal entourage. Truly appreciated that kind gesture after approaching heatstroke working in the hot sun like that.

Eventually we rolled over 2 more big hills to Jim and Jane’s home. Jim welcomed us in the front yard and immediately led us into his air conditioned garage to unpack, and then their absolutely lovely home. He let us have free roam of the entire basement, including a much needed shower and ice cold air conditioning. Alyssa was a bit worse for wear after the sun we caught all afternoon, and promptly fell asleep. During her heat-exhausted nap, I took a moment to paint a little bit.

Eventually, we met Jane as well, who suggested we go out for pizza for dinner if we were feeling up to it. We truly felt like they took care of every little thing during our short stay, from driving us to dinner with them, to giving us a public art tour of Newton (which has an impressive collection!).

They regaled us with absolutely fascinating stories of Jim’s Appalachian Trail through hike, or summitting of Kilimanjaro, or his nonstop (not even sleeping) gravel race across Iowa; or Jane’s extensive volunteering history during Hurricane Katrina, or in shelters. They are both inspiring and generous people, and I’m glad we got to spend an evening with them.

After dinner, we retired to our room and Alyssa and I both got some writing done and hit the hay.