Bigger hills…Ragbrai Day Six. Cresco, Iowa to Waukon, Iowa 67 miles

Today was college spirit day and woke up feeling much better. Lots of college jerseys. 60 miles is what Ragbrai said the mileage would be but it ended up being 67. Sometimes it’s incorrect because we have to ride out of town to find our host Campground. One thing I have learned on this ride is to not trust the posted mileage. We had our own private concert in Provitin (one of the pass through towns) because we rode early and got there before the crowds came. The band was called Challenger and the music was rock and really good. We stopped along the way and had some Iowa craft beer and relaxed in the shade as it was starting to get a bit warm. Our host Campground was a few miles out of town and as we were riding there I felt a little disappointed because I knew we would not make it back to town for the evening events. Our host for the evening was a farmer that farmed corn, hay and had a goat dairy. My disappointment faded once we were there and it became my favorite Campground of the entire trip. Curt and Judy Hanson were are hosts and an Amish family from a few miles down the valley helped out in welcoming us. Once we arrived we were served ice cold watermelon and cantaloupe in the air-conditioned basement of their home. When evening came they provided us dinner. We had haystacks which I had never heard of but were really really good. They went above and beyond to feed roughly 30 to 50 cyclists. They also lent their showers for us to get cleaned up. This was truly an incredible day! Tomorrow is our final day as we ride to Lansing. Mileage is 44 miles but we plan on taking a shortcut to cut that down to 19 because we need to pack up our bikes for shipping and make our way over to Desoto Wisconsin for our shuttle to Cedar Rapids Iowa. DeSoto is about 6 miles from Lansing and we will be doing that on foot. Shuttle leaves at two o’clock and we want to make sure we’re not rushed.

Town of Provitin