Day 42 Kokomo to Portland Ia

82/2865/1101 Good nights sleep till 6a for a change. We are back to Eastern time now, dark till 6a so Beau is out of sinc for his 5am drill. Too busy at motel breakfast, entire local softball team is consuming the few bagels and muffins so I stop at McD's for a value meal burrito and senior coffee and some quiet and the local newspaper. Local MD is getting sued with the hospital for not being licensed to do vascular surgery and the patient died, well, well local headlines. Nice quiet ride until Hartford city where I hit a road detour. It takes me 7 miles to the north and keeps on going so I make a left on a county road on my map and keep it to just 14 miles out of the way. Lots of dogs today, 3 boxers almost catch me, the white one did not want to give up, 28 mph for at least a mile, tired me out. Strong headwind last 7 miles so glad to be in Portland. Considered going on to next city, but the headwind has changed my mind for today. Longer day tomorrow to Dayton, but will leave a little earlier and it should be quiet on the roads as it is Sunday and even the motor bikers sleep in so I have the road to myself for first few hours. Some Nasty kids today shouted and threw something, only the third negative human encounter so far. Almost everyone else has been friendly , interested and supportive.

Day 41 Watseka to Kokomo

106/2783/1183 Another nice weather day. Met a group at the motel at breakfast that are touring Portland Or to Portland Maine. They left June 8 and only average 50 miles per day. They have a support van with a spouse but are carrying all their gear in panniers or bob trailers. Ride on US 24 is good for the first 30 miles then gets bad with no shoulder and lots of trucks. At small town of Monticello I change route and head south on 415 on some county roads , much quieter and safer. Lunch with Suz at the Delphi Tavern, chicken sandwich that upsets my stomach ( fried ) . Ride the next 76 into Kokomo and I get a little lost finding the motel, it is a few miles off route. We find an Olive garden and have a great pasta energy refuel and a good glass of red wine. Calculate that it is a long ride into Dayton via Portland, but will do it in two days. We will take a rest in Dayton and visit the kids and grandkids for a couple of days.

Day 40 Weona to Watseka Il

93/2677/1286 Another cool overcast morning after and early Beau walk again. 3am. Off at 7 a and the fields are covered in corn for as far as you can see. Road closed again with another detour but with good roads and sights. A few dogs but none to catch me. Nice lunch in Forest after the 20 mile detour at the Forest family restaurant. Large chef salad for $ 4.50 !! Nice tailwind into Watseka after miles of corn and corn, with a few soybeans thrown in. Stop to take a picture outside Watseka of the water tower and find that my banana uneaten today had decomposed on top of the camera. Banana juice killed the lcd on the camera back so you can't see what you are shooting.....will have to dry it out and see if it comes back or that will be camera number 2 killed on this trip. Motel in Watseka is poor and Mexican food is worst but more expensive that most......go figure.

Day 39 Muscatine to Weona Il

105/2584/1379 Beautiful morning again after motel breakfast. Out of Muscatine easily and over the Mississippi into Illinois, the big O land. Both Oprah and Obama. Detour at route 162, road closed and get lost somewhat. Ask 5 cars for directions and get five different answers. Last car was a road angel and she took the map and told me how to get to the next town on the route, so that got me back on track. Two kids with gps send me in wrong direction, probably on purpose. Many piercings on those lips and ears.........Great lunch at Rudy's bar and grille then off again to Weona. After route 40, hundreds of windmills in the corn fields for miles and miles into Weona. Do the pizza hut salad bar which wasn't that bad. Salad and pasta . Beau ate a loaf of flax seed bread, so he is out often doing his thing.

Day 38 Dyersville to Muscatine Ia

86/2379/1484 Corn, corn and more corn, with a few church steeples . Road is poor and some traffic, have to watch the traffic for trucks, but that is the norm. Pleasant ride into Lowden where we have Main street and again Broadway intersecting Main. Broadway is by far the second most common name of downtown streets second to Main Street. We stop at the Corner Cafe where they are very friendly. Have the chicken , cottage cheese and peach special platter for $ 4.00! Elise the owner takes our picture for their wall of tourists . Interesting old building, where the air conditioner drain comes into the men's bathroom and drips into the sink......We take a picture of the outside cafe and old opera house from the 1800's. Rest of the ride is easy through rolling hills and more corn fields. Come upon a crop circle picture along the road, looks like a golf club! Then a short way up I come upon Ansel's nine hole, where Ansel has built nine holes in his corn fields around a few acres that surround his farmhouse, should have gone back for a picture. Roll into Muscatine around 2p with nothing else remarkable. Motel with more commercials and old tv......or maybe a good book again.

Day 37 Harpers Ferry to Dyersville

57/2293/1570 Another great weather day, cool start under blue skies. Follow the great rivers route for the first 15 miles then thru historic town of Westgate on the river. Lots of old hotels and taverns . Leaving town I get chased down by a big male bull mastiff. He is an experience chaser as he runs 3o degrees ahead of me and catches me easily that way. He is all bark, growl and slobber but he doesn't try to bite me, I shout NO many times and he ends up standing in the road as I try to sprint away uphill.....I glance over my shoulder and see his doghouse, looks like a pile of bike parts and maybe a human femur with black lycra still on the bone. Lucky to get away with no injuries. Hilly short day into Dyersville, and I plan to visit the bike shop, but it closed a while ago, oh well.....We do a Country restraunt lunch and then a sub for dinner and get a redbox dvd movie to watch on the Laptop for a treat. We are so sick of commercials and air wave TV, even cable at motels is very limited to old movies with lots of commercials. We are spoiled by our TIVO recorder and without it we are reading a lot more rather than watch the poor programming on regular tv.

Day 36 Washaba to Harpers Ferry

110/2336/1627 Beau sleeps to 6a! Good nights sleep then leave around 7. Stop at the local Mart and get a bagel and coffee. When I come out there are four touring cyclists there, one (John) going from NYC to Vancouver, the other three doing a two week tour before starting jobs post college. I ask John how much his bike and gear weigh, he says 12 stone,,,,,a Brit. Beautiful cool morning in the 60's and powder blue sky. Have new paved road and cross/tailwind for next 60 miles. Stop in Homer for a break and chat with some want to be retirees and give them by five minute how to speak. They were very grateful, so maybe I should finish by e-book on how to do it......I ride along again until the detour which takes me around I90, where a cyclist in his pickup tells me there is a bike path along I90 so that I don't have to go 10 miles out of my way! Great quaint bikepath along the Mississippi and stands of old oak trees. Come into La Crescent and have a sandwich at the local gas/mart with Suz as we can't find the Subway. Head back along the Scenic River road and have a great ride with some tailwind and some hills now. Suz gets to Lansing and finds no rooms available and no campgrounds so we decide to roll on to Harpers Ferry, another 10 miles along. We get a motel room at the only motel, quiet and comfy but no Wifi, so we play cards and watch one of three channels . Dinner at Buck and Bulls Bar and Grille then back for more cards and route planning. We are considering cutting across Illinois to save time but need to do some planning and maybe experiment off our cycle maps to see how that works. We may find ourselves on bad roads with no places to stay......we'll see.

Day 35 Stillwater to Washaba

92/2226/17 Poor sleep last night in Stillwater as the Dog Dog guys were up drinking and making noise till 1:30a, I overheard a shout match with another guest and the drunks, so I didn't get involved and that did not quiet them down. Leave just after 7a and stop at McD's down the street for burrito and coffee, then get lost. Go all the way back into town looking for route 26 and can't find. There is a footrace and lots of buses, traffic and runners milling about and I ask three for directions and get three differing answers, so I try my luck and after 18 wandering miles find my route 26, aka the Stagecoach trail. Interesting road that follows a hilly corridor through the trees, lots of cyclists out today as it is Saturday morning. Lots of hills today, my total climb in feet is over 3500, more than twice any day in the last week. Stop for a couple of breaks in quaint towns along lakes and the Mississippi. The route weaves back and forth between Wisconsin and Minnesota over the Mississippi. Sailboats on the water around lake Pepin and Lake City, a regatta or racing the local club today. Overcast and chilly but the wind is at my back most of the way. Nice finish along the Mississippi into Washaba Mn for the night. We find a local eat stop on the Mississippi along docks called Slippery's and chat with Tiffany who is single and travelling with her puppy bull dog Maddison. There is riverboat days festival here this weekend complete with a local parade. Looking forward to a good nights sleep tonight, may give beau some wine or beer to see if he will sleep past 5a!

Day 34 Cambridge to Stillwater NC

65/2134/1829 Rain! Beau is up at 4:52 am and it is raining lightly. He then wakes at 6:15a for breakfast . I have to go to the van to get his food, so I get wet and decide to stay up and see if the rain stops soon. Check the wunderkind radar and see that the front with lightning storms will pass within the hours so I settle for the newspaper and the continental breakfast from the hotel and take my time to get ready. Overcast but lightning and rain stop by 8a so I am off. I decide to deviate from the map and try MN 95 all the way to Stillwater and It is a good decision. First 20 is newly paved and a great ride. Route goes through some quaint towns and follows the Mississippi river most of the way, Wisconsin is on the other side of the river all the way. I left the camera off bike today due to rain so a few things I cannot shoot. See a sign at a coffee shop in North Branch that says " Spend Stimulus Money Here" , money for caffeine stimulus? Also pass a neat little museum of metal sculptures along the way, a few acres of metal sculptures. Will not forget the camera in the future, will take the ziploc for rain. Ride into Stillwater after a few steep hill surprises and find that this weekend is LumberJack Days Festival, so hope the motels are not full. Call Suz and she has procured a super 8 room for a premium price, but that is all there is here. The weather has cleared and my luck has held, no rain today on the ride and it is clearing by the hour. Hope the wind from the front dies down as it is coming from the south and that is my direction tomorrow. Will spend the afternoon planning the next 400 miles to Muscatine Iowa before dinner. Will try to do 100 miles per day next four days to see how I feel, so far I am not tired.

Day 3 Royalton to Cambridge Mn

86/2069/1984 Half Way! Today we broke the halfway barrier in Cambridge Mn. Poor sleep last night in the Twin Lakes Campground. Combination of bright security light, train noise, rain storms and 10,000 flies kept us up most of the night. Beau is up at 6a, so so are we. Have picnic table coffee then off for the day. Overcast and cool start. I see rain off in the distance so resign myself to get wet soon, but it doesn't happen. It's five miles back to Royalton to the bike route on rte 10 or I can make my way across the sideboards , so that is what I try, hoping not to get lost. I make it fine to route 26 and save a couple of miles in the process. Quiet start and there is a biplane barnstorming over the fields to the north, interesting to watch in the early morning sun. Along the way on old spotted coon dog ambushes me , I never saw him and he nearly gets a nip on my ankle before he poops out. Another mile up the road I smell bacon cooking at a farmhouse and my stomach rumbles in response. Breakfast today was a protein bar in camp and an apple on break later. The country roads are rough and cracked and my shoulders and neck are getting sore from the pounding continually. I would not be surprised if i have lost a few filling in my teeth from all the rattling the past few days. Bad roads are getting to be the worst part of the day, replacing the high hills in the Rockies. Bad roads slow you down and you have to pick your way among the cracks and pot holes while watching the traffic in your mirror. More dogs along the way, some just look but a collie mutt would have caught me if she didn't have an acre front yard to cover. Bad Lassie!! Suz finds a nice motel in Cambridge with Wifi and we send out our half way email with picture . We visit the local Applebee's and have a steak dinner to celebrate. Rain in the forecast so my weather luck may be running out.

Day 32 Battle Lake to Royalton

93/1983/2070 Another beautiful day on the road. Clear skies and a light wind on the way out of town. Continue to follow the Otter tail scenic byway trough rolling hills, lakes and farms. Pass one farm and get drenched in the smell of strawberries, no question what this crop is.....

I rest at mile 31 gas and grocery stop and chat with the local telephone repair guy. He welcomes me to Minnesota and I am glad I don't' have to pay by the minute ......very chatty. Meet Suz at Long Prairie and we do a BK Whopper lunch, no mayo, then on to Little falls. Not too far and we get a detour due to construction. Takes us way out of the way and I get chased by a farm dog for the first time in days. The dog catches me by surprise in the "worst case scenario" .......going uphill, but I have enough momentum to outrun him before the hill slows me down too much. All the motels in Little Falls are booked, so we head south to a RV park and van camp for the night. Nice place but lots of flies and it is hot in the sun. We have Internet but not a good connection so we do just emails and I finally beat Suz at Rummy. Leftover sandwiches for dinner and an early night at dark. Storms keep us up and we are still killing the flies that invaded the van in the morning. Tomorrow will be the halfway mileage day going into Cambridge and hope the storms let up by morning. Nice campground, they have tubing on the lakes, gooney golf, horseshoes, pool, soccer and baseball feilds.

Day 31 Fargo to Battle Lake

97/1890/2163 Picture of the Fargo police station, reminiscent of the Fargo Movie. Take the picture on my way out of town on another beautiful morning then into a detour on University Drive that takes me 4 miles out of my way through residential areas. County roads 12 and 10 are pretty rough and 10 has lots of noisy trucks. After a point I turn onto the Otter Tail scenic byway and the trucks go away and the scenery improves to small farms and lakes between rolling hills. Stop at the roadhouse grill at Lake Cormorant and have a great chicken sandwich with some locals and Harley Bikers rolling through. Hills not that steep but constant challenge and here we have trees and forest stands between fields of both wheat and corn. Farmers or their wives have planted wildflowers along the edge of their crop fields along the way and the farmhouses all are well kept with flower gardens and lots of plastic deer and bunnies in the neat lawns. Most have planted large Oak trees to shade their home plots and gardens. A young doe walks up the middle of the road around the bend just outside of Cormorant and I barely scare her off the road. In Pelican Rapids along Pelican Lake, there is a small sailboat club with a smattering of small sailboats, signs for Saturday Morning races weekly. Nice easy ride into Battle Lake and a quaint little motel with chairs on lawn outside each unit. We sit out front with Beau and enjoy the afternoon until a shower scares us in. Recommended food is Stella's downtown, not connected with the Stella's from Fargo, but another great restaurant with good service and food on a beautiful outside veranda. Another coincidence. We have a nice sleep and rest tonight.

Day 30 Cooperstown to Fargo

96/1793/2260 Early start with a coffee stop at the Cooperstown gas station/market. The good ole boys forecast no rain today but the newspaper says 40% chance, hope the good ole boys are right. Headwind again but not as strong as yesterday. Weave through wheat fields and see the first long fields of corn and soybean. So lots of turns through the back roads, so I see wheat, wheat, wheat, wheat, farmhouse, wheat, wheat, corn, wheat, soybeans , wheat then a sign for Missile silo : November 33 ! Right off the road, picture above, not expecting to see a missile silo, marked right off the road in the middle of a wheat field. Well, after all that wheat, anything would surprise me! Almost expecting to see peanut butter and jelly fields to go with all that bread. Ride to Arthur, ND for a great lunch at Kelly's cafe, Suz meets me there , she passes me 1.5 miles before there. Whilst we eat, the skies open and it rains hard with some lightning. I start out again with jacket on, but it stops almost immediately and off with the jacket. Lots of turns with more rain threatening. There is some construction on County 4 and I end up taking the road in the wrong direction, the east/west are not marked. So I go 11 miles out of my way. Skirt the thunderstorms and don't get wet. Suz comes and picks me up at the end into Fargo just as the skies open up. After Fargo we head South to Stillwater in Minnesota, a four day trek but looks like more places to stop in the 80-90 mile per day range. At 80 miles per day, we have 28 more days to go.

Day 29 Lakota to Cooperstown

54/1697/2356 Cool morning start with a headwind. Wind gets stronger as the morning ages, and it is 46 miles until I turn away from the headwind. Lots of wheat again and small lakes interspersed in the wheat fields. It is Sunday morning, so not a lot of traffic, but lots of pick up trucks with boats in tow. The lakes are sometimes invisible in the rolling fields , first discernible by the darker cat tails that surround the low lying areas around the lakes. Saw an interesting site, a farmer had created a bridge across a shallow lake using old cars, trucks and farm equipment. Looked pretty nasty, lots of rust and old metal. Finally turned onto route 200 into Cooperstown with a tailwind for the last 8 miles. Quaint town and quiet on Sunday afternoon. The cafe at the motel just closed at 1:30 p so we have a choice of pizza place or getting some groceries. Looked at the pizza place and it seems to be the popular place on Sunday afternoon, lots of families doing pizza and wings after church. We decide to try the market and get a roasted chicken and veggies for the micro- microwave in the motel room. We have a easy night of cards and old movies, Urban Cowboy ( surprise) and then a Robert Ludlum thriller, Bourne Supremacy. Since we don't watch commercials at home due to TIVO, we are finding all kinds of neat stuff that we need to buy that we did not know we needed before.. Chop-0-matic, window cleaners and if we see the Lipitor heart attack guy again, he may not live much longer. There are pills getting commercials for conditions that I did not know existed, I think some conditions were developed by the drug companies because 10% of everyone watching this prime time commercial is going to think they have this condition. Tomorrow on to Fargo, last stop before Minesotta.

Day 28 Rugby to Lakota ND

84/1644/2723 Original plan was to ride to Devils Lake but all the motels and campgrounds are full due to a Cabala's fishing tournament. So we see another town up the road and sleuth Suzanne gets a motel room with Wifi , only one of two left. Stop in Devils Lake and have a sub, no sights different today, lots of farmland with wheat and hay. Have a nice easy ride, tailwind but just 8 mph today at the back, few hills and good shoulder on the roads. I average today 16.74 mph vs 12 mph in the mountains. Gold Wing Bob from last nights campground passes me around mile 73 , he must have slept in and had a big breakfast! Interesting motel here in Lakota, ND. Sign on the door says $ 300 fine for cleaning game birds in your room and towels are available in the lobby to clean your gun or dog, don't use the bathroom towels or you'll be charged extra! We aim to make your stay enjoyable! There is a restaurant and bar here so we will try it for dinner, maybe they will have game birds? Nice to talk with the sibs and Mom for her Birthday lunch. Takes a long time to update the blog when we get so many days behind........now to the maps to recalculate distances 2 go....tomorrow I'll do a long ride between here and Fargo. There are no good places to stay, so I'll ride till I'm tired then Suzanne will come pick me up and take us to Fargo. Then I'll start at the stop point and cycle through Fargo and stay in Minnesota somewhere on Fargo's East side. If we get comfortable with this method, we can up the mileage with Suzanne shuttling between start and stop places, increasing the daily mileage as we will not be constrained by motel/camp availability. We'll see how it goes. I expect to find more frequent stop points as we get into Minnesota and less desolate areas. Perfect would be motels every 20 miles or so as you find them along the interstates.

Day 27 Minot to Rugby ND

65/1557/2807 Will update the mileage logs with the maps sometime around Fargo when we are in a motel with good Internet so I can check some distances online. Think that the 2go figure is too large, have to splice some distances from different maps and check them online. Little BIG project that you don't always feel like doing after a long ride...Last nights was a good nights sleep and had a good continental breakfast at the Days Inn. They had the waffle irons so had a good waffle and the newspaper. Spoke with Tom Z and he and John are doing good, they are about 500 miles behind us now if my Math is correct. Robert King made it home to Arizona ok on the bus, his bronchitis getting the better of him. He'll have to finish on his Harley next year. I ride out on Rte 2 and after 10 miles come upon two touring ladies. They are from Seattle and are on their way to Portland. One is older so this may be a mother daughter team, but I don't ask.....we're both headed to Rugby for the night. They claim to have done one 100 mile day with a tailwind, once in a lifetime ride! We get to Rugby around noon and have lunch at the Geographical center of North America cafe. Great lunch for the money and the locals are very colorful and politically vocal. Conservative country with an opinion about everything. NO MOTELS due to construction workers, so we get into an RV park with CONSTRUCTION workers in their rv's and lots of Motor Bikers. Have a long chat with Bob from Colorado who is here on his Gold Wing and pop up trailer. He grew up here many a year ago and says that the town is divided between Catholics and Protestants, a regular Ireland with the Catholics in the bullying majority. They even control the majority of the town cemetery! We get some internet wifi but the digital tv gets no signal so I can't update blogs. Since it is Friday, the construction workers leave for the local bar and come home loudly throughout the night, so we get poor sleep tonight. Supposed to be cool again tonight.

Day 26 New Town to Minot, ND

69/1492/2872

Late start from the RV park. Sign posted on the bathroom says closed 7-730 a for cleaning, so we are slowed in our morning routine. Of course, no one cleaned the bathrooms at 7a.....finally ready and the camp host chats for a long time about the ride and wishes us well. 2 miles back to the route and it is cold this morning, low 40's and I have jacket and gloves on......for first two hours, windy so wind chill might be into the high 30's. Some small hills all the way to SR 83 over farmland and lots more wheat and hay. Turn toward Minot for last 16 miles into gigantic headwind that knocks speed down to 11 mph tops and less working up the hills. Make my way to Days Inn where the room is not ready, and Suz tells me the wind picked up the driver door and bent it and buckled the front fender. So....we look in the yellow pages and find an auto body shop close by. Drive over and the owner ( Hutchinson Auto Body) is a Harley Biker and tells us it will be a cash only deal, so I cringe and wait for the hit. Then he says it will be anywhere from 30 to 60 dollars to get the door functional again, so I say go for it. We walk Beau and come back and he is almost done with the pry bar and pneumatic wrenches, he shows me the stress fracture and we chat about the ride and he only charges us $20 for 30 minutes work and we are on our way. Get back to the motel and our room is ready! Tonight we dine at the local wings place, but I am disappointed as I thought I could get a good salad, but they only have the standard fried food. Back to the motel and get and update on Tour de France, Lance is in #3 spot. TV and rest tonight.

Day 25 Williston to New Town

73/1423/2941 Late start after loading van for Suz. Rough road with no shoulder and lots of trucks. I watch my rear view mirror as much as looking forward, just in case. Some deer and lots of wheat fields and hay . I pass a heard of horses all laying down, maybe the wind chill? Windy today with 25mph steady and gusts to 40. Suz has a near miss with a deer crossing the road, she saw it bounding through the grass at the last moment before it crossed the road. No motel rooms available in New Town so we find a rv spot outside of town on lake Sacajawea. Nice little general store and a restaurant up on the main route for dinner. Scenic 23 is the local bar and restaurant and has decent food. I have the local Walleye fish dinner and it is good. Suz is not hungry and has soup. Interesting locals and lots of construction workers and truckers stop here. We return for a master rummy game and suz beats me on the very last hand.....Supposed to get cold tonight, into the 40's again. Tomorrow a short ride to Minot, big city.........

Day 24 Culberston to Williston

45/1350/3014 Nasty thunderstorms from 3a on and heavy wind keep us from getting a good nights sleep. Wind was strong enough to rock the van and t storms were right over us, very noisy. Breakfast at the western cafe was good and even the special was a lot of food. 15 mph tailwind makes for an easy ride with a few hills. No animals to be seen but again a lot of wheat fields swaying like waves in the wind. At Bainesville we hit road construction and Suz comes back for me as there is a two mile section that is not paved and they are blasting. We get through with no problem and I continue to ride into Williston. No motels have rooms but we find one at the international motel but have to wait, so we do laundry and check out the route out of town in the morning. Visit to Walmart for groceries and a bathroom scale, want to see what we weigh after 3 months on the road. It is raining on an off, but did not get wet on the bike. Finally get into our room and decide to just order pizza which we make quick business of. Good nights sleep tonight as there are no windows in this motel, so Beau cannot see the early morning light.

Day 23 Circle to Culbertson

81/1305/3059 , 7:30a start after an early morning with Beau. Easy first 20 miles with nothing but wheat in sight, no animals, only raptors soaring over the fields in search of prairie dogs and mice. A few hills but mostly flat with a tailwind until I turn on rte 2 into a monster headwind. 12mph top speed for 30 miles and some hills again. No motels in Poplar and looks a bit run down. Ride on another 30 to Culbertson and again no motels due to construction workers overpopulating the area. We find a rv park with electric, the owners are nice and let us stay for a reduced price of $ 15 in that we don't need full hookup and electric only for coffee in the morning. It's 56 to Williston from here and 139 to Minot and from there 5 days to Fargo to finish North Dakota. We dine at the local casino/bar and grill. Nice salads and we watch the news on TV. Local regulars come through with their 20 gallon hats that stay on in the bar. They have their whiskey, a smoke then move on. Pretty dead for a Monday night, but we are early birds at 5:30p. Play backgammon till dark then early to sleep.