Orange City to Milford, IA

Orange City is a cute Dutch town with lots of authentic Dutch stuff, including windmills and a canal in the town park. The canal served as the “dip spot” for the rear tire since we started about 25 miles from the Missouri River and the tradition is to dip your rear tire in the Missouri at the start of the ride.

The first day ride did not disappoint. It was a 73-mile ride with about 1900 feet of climbing. We had no rain and lots of cloud cover until noon so you know what that means…yep, you guessed it, a stiff headwind. The prevailing winds might be from the west, but it doesn’t seem to be the case when the Tripletts are on the road.

The start town went all out. Many people were put to see us off as early as 6 am. There was also a mile-long stretch of tulips on both sides of the road that school children had made.

We stopped at a nice lemonade stand that a local farmer and his daughter had set up.

Some of you wonder what 10,000+ riders looks like…well, as far as the eye can see in front of us and behind was full of cyclists all day.

We saw plenty of corn, but didn’t get to taste any today. Hopefully tomorrow. Bill loves corn on the cob. Should I buy him this cycling kit?

We completely swamped a town of 74 people, May City, but they did a great job preparing and offering easy to serve items like a root beer float for a goodwill donation. It almost made up for no corn..

And for those of you waiting for the shower report, you have to bear in mind that we are camping, so I suppose we should have a slightly modified rating system. It starts with a line, one for the men (longer when we stepped up) and one for the women.

They provide a towel…one step above course sandpaper. And the showers are advertised as “hot.” Bill struggled with that aspect, I had a hot shower.

The shower itself is a stall inside of a converted semi trailer. It has it’s own privacy area for changing. About 2 feet by 2 feet.

After all of that prelude, I think we rate today’s shower at about a 6.5 for a camping shower.

Lastly, I have never been on a ride like this where the bags are sorted and put in color piles when the pull them off the trucks…it sure does make it easy to find your bags.