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Waverly to Decorah- 90 miles and 2298 ft of vertical climbing. Now we'll get some exercise!
Towns visited-
Tripoli, Sumner, Alpha, Waucoma, St. Lucas, Ft. Atkinson, Spillville (Dvorak's Iowa home), and Ridgeway
our thanks to Rich Ketcham from GeoBike for doing this great work and research and allowing us to put it here.
Day 5
Can it get any hotter?
One of the
Waverly hosts for RAGBRAI was Opal Lampey. Opal was a
past RAGBRAI rider and she very nicely gave us a ride to the St.
Mary's Catholic Church where we enjoyed a great meal. Opal is a
great ambassador for Waverly and RAGBRAI.
It was too hot for much nightlife. The Blue Band was part of the
entertainment at the fairgrounds. We stayed at a private home
last night and many of the HAWGs spent the night in their own
beds. We were up early, as our ride from Waverly to Decorah was
long and we wanted to beat the heat as much as possible. Not an
easy task as it was so humid when we got up our tents were
soaking wet.
Today was a day of survival. We spent much of time just trying to
consume as much liquid as possible and stop and sit in the shade
to cool off.
Our first stop was in Tripoli, Elvis was our first sighting.
Elvis impersonator was Roger Goudschaal. Elvis sang for a while
and then left in a limousine. We wondered where he was going. It
was probably air conditioned in the limo and he was just cooling
off. Lucky guy.
One of our many water stops was the Air Force water tanker.
According to reports the tanker holds 55,000 gallons of water.
We stopped in Sumner and uploaded information for the page,
thanks to City Clerk, Cherryl Cole. Bruce spent this time in air
conditioning. I took a delightful nap, sitting on cement and
leaning against my bicycle tire, was I tired or what/
In Wacoma, there was an entrepreneurial young man, who was
selling chance to hit an
inner tube in the river with a golf ball. He charged $1.00 per ball. The prize was half the pot
if anyone hit the mark. While we were there no one managed to get
even close. A couple of local boys were sent into the river to
retrieve the golf balls.
The Back Home Boys greeted us in Fort Atkinson. Ruie needed more shade, a
hard commodity to find. We did not visit the remains of the Fort
as RAGBRAI had visited Fort Atkinson in 1996.
In Spillville we visited St. Wensaslaus Church to
listen to the newly refurbished organ. This is the organ that
Dvorak played over 100 years ago. The church was built in 1860 and the community has done
a commendable job of keeping it in good shape.
Ridgeway hosted the beer garden. A local bar had their own beer
garden as well. I am sure that the streets of Ridgeway were
hopping. Another site
in this town was the Chatterbox Café.
And you thought Lake Wobegon was the only place where the
Chatterbox Café existed.
We hit real hills today. These are not the rollers that you can coast half-way
up. On these hills, you shift down to your lowest gear and crank
it out at 6 MPH. Tomorrow promises more of the same. It is
supposed to be hotter! We wondered out loud if this was fun or
just work. Are we all foolish bikers or just biking fools?
After more than 2 miles of gravel, the final ride into Decorah
was nice as it was mostly down hill. We didn't have to pedal for
over a mile. Once again, we rode through the entire community of
Decorah to get to the information booth. To add insult to injury
there was a killer hill on this route. We are pretty sedentary
tonight...Too hot and too stiff to move.
