9-12-2012 (Wednesday) Muscatine to Burlington, Iowa

56 miles biked today
5 hrs. 6 minutes
10.9 mph

This is the bridge that John and I crossed last year when we bicycled to Bar Harbor, Maine.  Once we left Muscatine we are now biking in territory that we have never biked in before.


 

What a difference a day can make. Up until today we have had endless rolling hills all the way through eastern Iowa. Today we finally broke out of the hills and coasted into the Mississippi River flood plain. We left the Super 8 hotel in Muscatine at 6:30 this morning after a breakfast of Raisin Bran expecting to stop in Oakville for a real breakfast 30 miles later. It was fairly dark yet but we felt we needed to start early to beat the traffic thru town and to beat the afternoon heat. The predicted high was 87 degrees. We were able to find our way out of Muscatine easy enough and started by following the river for the first couple miles.  After getting out of town and entering the flood plain we were treated to an 18 mile stretch before encountering the first hill of any size. Up that hill we were up on somewhat of a plateau and did another flat stretch of 12 miles to get us to Oakville. Just before entering Oakville we crossed the Iowa river. It too is very low.  We cruised into town expecting to find a small café or convenience store where we could get a bite to eat but there was absolutely nothing of the sort. It was actually rather erie, almost like an old west ghost town, not a person in site. So we had no choice but to continue on another 25 miles to Burlington. We were very fortunate it was easy terrain. A bowl of Bran Flakes just doesn’t keep you going very long. That was a good example of where it makes good sense to carry high energy snacks with you just in case…



We are far enough south now that we are seeing farmers combining corn. We saw probably a dozen combines in the fields between Oakville and Burlington. It seemed like every piece of farm equipment we saw today was green, we are definitely in John Deere country.
When we finally got to Burlington at 11:30 we stopped at a Casey’s General Store and gulped down the largest sodas they sold. It was hot and we were very thirsty after biking more or less none stop for 52 miles. We inquired about places to eat and were told everything is downtown, about two miles further down the road. Ok but now we’re back into some serious hills and ended up doing some walking before choosing a restaurant and finding a hotel to settle down for the afternoon and evening.

Purely by coincedence while blogging we're also watching the weather channel and on comes Storm Stories and it tells of how in June of 2007 Oakville, Iowa was descimated by the worst flood in it's history more or less washing the town off the map and down the river.

This is the bridge in Burlington that we will cross tomorrow morning - we will leave
Iowa and bicycle in Illinois for a few days!

Tomorrow morning we will say good bye to Iowa and cross the mighty Mississippi on highway 34 going into Illinois to spend a couple days on the east side of the river.