Today’s ride from Ames to Des Moines was a relatively short one, so the guys were not pushing to get out early. It was almost 7:30 when they got on their bikes and headed out. The heat index for today was forecast to be 105.
I blessed each of them, which I do every morning before they ride off, and David and I slowly meandered back into the motor home. Not in a hurry this morning. Why not? you might be thinking. After all, our departures usually look like the pit crew at the Indy 500. Well, not today. Why? Because tonight we had a reservation at a campground. We knew where we would be parking, the bikers knew where we would be parking, and so we did not have to race anyone to find a spot. We already had one .
The small difference was that we were not actually going to the official overnight town of Des Moines. Before Ragbrai, Kevin had been studying the biker’s route maps for each day’s ride and found that the Day 4 ride was relatively short – ~ 55 miles. And the Day 5 ride was one of those long (over 80 mile) days. So Kevin proposed that he and Erik extend the Day 4 ride a little so as to make the Day 5 ride a little shorter. Erik agreed, and so Altoona was chosen as the overnight town for the 3Dudaks team for Day 4 instead of Des Moines. David then went to work and found a campground in the Altoona area, consulted with the rest of the team, and then made a reservation for Adventureland RV Park for the Day 4 overnight. Not only could we have a leisurely departure from Ames, but we could also stop along the way for fuel or grocery shopping or a handy laundromat or whatever if we felt the need to do so. We were going to be somewhere that we could dump and replenish our fresh water tank. There was a grassy area for Erik’s tent that was right next to where we would be parking. The setup seemed to be just what we needed at this stage of the ride.
So we took our time leaving. We got David’s morning lymphatic treatment done and then took a leisurely drive towards Altoona and the Adventureland campground. Now, how much difference was there for the bikers between biking to Des Moines and biking to Altoona. The answer is – I have no idea. But here is a map that gives an overview of their relative locations.
The bikers route came into Des Moines from the north on Hwy 69 (runs north-south close to the middle of the map). It went south of 235 on 69 a few blocks and wandered around a bit before ending in that area south of 235 near 69. The next day (Day 5), the biker’s route started in the same area and exited Des Moines to the east, then turned north, then east into Altoona, then stair stepped up to Colfax (the meeting town) and on to Tama-Toledo. If you look at the map above, you will see Altoona (in small red letters) on the far right of the map at Interstate 80. I’m not sure of the exact route that our riders planned to take or just where they planned to leave the route off of 69 and head to Altoona. But they would cut a huge U out of the route and add most of those miles back in their transit east to the campground and then from the campground to pick the route up again the next day. So that was the plan.
With the plan in our back pocket, David and I headed out of Ames and made our way to Altoona. Altoona was named by the surveyor who laid out the city in 1868. The Latin word for high is altus, and Altoona was the highest point on the Des Moines Valley Railroad between Des Moines and Keokuk. Now, how you get Altoona from altus is a mystery to me. But that’s the story in case you ever wondered where the name Altoona came from.
We used the support driver’s route map to get us most of the way from Ames to Des Moines, and then we made up our own route to get to Altoona. By then, we knew that we would not cross the bike route, so David put Adventureland Campground in his trusty ipad so that we could find the campground and that spot that had our name on it . Well, we had no problem finding Adventureland Resort, which turns out to be a family oriented amusement park with rides, shows, games, water attractions, and all of the things one might expect at a theme park. The campground we were going to was a part of this resort. So our GPS took us to the amusement park, but not to the campground. Well, we ended up driving around in circles and blocks for awhile before we finally found a tiny, unobtrusive sign with the teeny, tiny word Campground on it. The sign wasn’t even facing the road. We were almost to our spot – the one with our name on it !!! So we made the turn down the road towards the campground and parked in the line at the office. David went into the office and waited for his turn to register. After about 15 minutes, he came back out with the directions to our site. So we ambled slowly thru the park and headed toward our assigned spot. As we moved thru the park, we noticed that it looked kind of tired. Like it hadn’t had much TLC in recent years. We found our spot and got set up.
We studied the park map and found the various restroom/shower houses and laundry rooms. Poked our heads in here and there. Things looked very dated everywhere, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. David and I each took showers, and we went to different shower houses to see if one was preferred over the other for our bikers. I then went to a (very dirty) laundry room and managed to get a couple of loads of laundry done. Somewhere in the mid afternoon, we were contacted by Kevin, asking us to come pick them up. They were off the route per their plan and trying to make their way to the park, but the roads were not good ones for bikers – very busy, high traffic, no shoulders. Since they did not know the area, they had no way of knowing how to circumvent these conditions. So they wisely pulled over, contacted us, and sent us their location. Since we had Erik’s bike rack on the back of our car, it was easy-peasy to make it to their location and pick them up. It turned out to be doubly a good thing, because part of the route to the rv park was under heavy construction with narrow one way traffic on the one intact lane, and the other lane was completely torn out down to the dirt. Detour ran off into a neighborhood somewhere. Anyway, we made it back to the park and the guys went to the showers. We encouraged them to take shower shoes of some sort as the showers had felt a bit yucky to David and me earlier. For dinner, we went to Jethro’s BBQ, a restaurant not far from the campground. Kevin and Erik treated us to this tasty repast. Thank you, Kevin and Erik! When we returned to the motor home, our riders began their prep for the Day 5 ride from Des Moines (Altoona) to Tama-Toledo, a distance of 89 miles. Erik had long since set up his tent. David and I studied the maps into Tama-Toledo, a duo of towns very close together that combined their resources to provide an overnight stop for this year’s Ragbrai. We found on the Ragbrai map an Information stop on the south end of Tama. Our instructions were to stop at this information station, and someone there would tell us where to go and park. Okay. We decided we could handle that. So tomorrow night’s location was TBD.
Winding up the day, I want to share with you some of the pictures Kevin took between Ames and Altoona. Their route is always more interesting than the support vehicle route.
Sunset Day 4
Dudaks Living Our Dream 