RAGBRAI L 2023 in Iowa (7/22 - 7/29/23)

With long-time friends from Maryland and our son Zack, we took our home on wheels and attempted to ride the entire 500+ mile, 7-day, crazy bike ride across Iowa in July. The Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI) hosted their 50 anniversary ride in 2023 with record attendance.

Starting in Sioux City, IA we had a pre-ride picture showing our team jerseys with Tom and Matt once we arrived the day before the ride commenced.

One of the traditions of RAGBRAI is to dip your back tire in the Missouri river on the west coast of Iowa and dip the front tire in the Mississippi river on day 7 in the east. This is the whole team with our support crew (Diane and Zack) included.

It is hard to tell from my pictures, but day 1 was packed with riders excited to start the 7 day journey. From the number of ambulance sirens we heard on day 1, some didn't make it too far.

This morning on day 3, we rode from Carroll to Ames wearing our official RAGBRAI L jerseys. In addition to thousands of bikers, everyday you see more corn and soybeans in the fields than you can imagine.

One commonality we encountered daily was the sunrise as we attempted to stay ahead of the triple digit heat indexes predicted by mid-day. This picture was from day 4 in Ames.

Our support crew always took care of us by moving, resupplying, and setting up camp in the next overnight town. Diane and Zack always made sure we arrived after a long day to shade, chairs, tasty food, and cool drinks. Since we had an RV we also welcomed a little rest inside with the AC and a shower. We could also do laundry on a daily basis to keep the home smelling nice after long sweaty days.

This is us relaxing in Des Moines Waterworks park where Lynyrd Skynyrd played later that evening for the riders. Every night on RAGBRAI has entertainment, but attending concerts 7 days in a row plus riding required too much energy from me, so some of us skipped a few.

On day 6, the ride ventured through the Amana Colonies to bring us back in time to another era.

One of the greatest assets of RAGBRAI is the hundreds of vendors who serve food, drinks, and provide services along the ride every day. Here is the Beekmans Homemade Ice Cream we enjoyed.

Next to Beekmans we thought the sunflower field looked spectacular.

Now the nights during RAGBRAI can be another challenge. If it's not being too hot and humid, storms can come through to scare the campers, but it will cool you off. This night in Coralville, we were hit with a thunderstorm that had very strong winds that sent many campers to storm shelters under tornado sirens and caused some tents to be rolling across the campground. We just rode it out in the RV.

On day 7 we rode through Kinnick Stadium, home of the Iowa Hawkeye football team. We also rode through the stadium of Iowa State when we ended our ride in Ames on day 3. By this time we had become so exhausted and this was my last picture of us together. We finished the ride later that day in Davenport on the east side of the state. In the end we all could agree that this was one "L" of a ride. Now we head to the Beach!!!