RAGBRAI - Day 3 - Perry to Des Moines - 49.9 Miles = COMPLETE!!

The RAGBRAI route was announced in January and once I saw it'd be coming from Perry to Des Moines, I wanted to go. When I saw that it'd be the lowest mileage and elevation day, I knew I HAD to go.

We took the plunge and invested in a bike rack, fancier helmets, gloves, biking shorts and eventually traded our hybrids in for road bikes. We trained about 1-2 times a week when we could.  The longest training ride we did was 40 miles.

We started off Tuesday night, driving to Perry and setting up a tent in my friend Kim's yard. We had planned to attend the entertainment for the night, which was Hairball, but all concerts were canceled due to a storm. Huge thanks to Kim and Mike for letting us hang out in their house while it rained. And, for feeding us.

We had never opened our tent until Tuesday night. We had
no idea how it went together or anything, but Jeremy and
Mike had it up within 20 minutes. 

It even has a 3 season porch - Fancy! Little Afton decided it
was a good place to take a quick snooze. 

In the morning, we picked up our mess, checked the tires on the bikes and we were off. Since we had to come back for a car, we decided to leave our tent up and let the 3 season porch dry out a bit more.

First town - Washington Township - They were serving breakfast, but we were only 6 miles in and not ready to stop yet.

2nd Town - Minburn! We stopped here for awhile. The lines for food and the bathroom were RIDICULOUS! I think the 28,000 riders were the most people this town has seen in 5 years combined. :)

Next town - Dallas Center! We finally stopped and ate!

Jeremy mastered locking all 4 of our bikes to each other. 

They had midget wrestling, although I never did see either
of the midgets actually wrestle. 

They called this a wood oven pizza, that
can cook a pizza in 2 minutes. (looks like
a brick oven to me though) Still cool that
it's on an old fire truck. 

We all signed the wall! 

After a long bathroom break - we were off to Van Meter!

Crazy things you see! 

We didn't stop in Van Meter long, before we were off to Valley Junction. The whole ride, up until this point, was fairly easy and we had NO wind. We couldn't have asked for better weather. We must have jinxed ourselves though because the ride to Valley Junction was TORTURE!! We had wind, hills, and construction. The traffic really picked up too as we got closer to Valley Junction.

I actually took NO pictures in Valley Junction, at that point, I was just wanting to finish. So, we started the last leg to Water Works park where the bikers were camping. Since we weren't camping that night, we rode to Mullets, where I had my parents pick Jeremy and I up to take us back to Perry to get our car.

We packed up our tent, and drove home, where we showered, played with the kids, and headed to Court Avenue where all the entertainment was happening. And, downtown was crazy busy. They had the best line up of music than any other town with Live, Filter, Sponge and Ever Clear.

Jeremy and I were exhausted, so we headed home early. A Huge thanks to my Parents, and Grandma Nancy for all their help and support. We couldn't have made this happen without them. And, to Kim and Mike for hosting us. We couldn't have asked for better hosts.

Now that we know a little more of what to expect, we'll see what next year holds. Maybe we'll get crazy and do 2 or even 3 days. It truly is an experience everyone should see and do. It's amazing to see all the fun helmets, jerseys,  the distance people travel for this, just everything. I think the farthest I saw, was California. I saw someone from Canada as well, and someone who passed me had an accent that sounded like he was french.

A Huge thanks to my Parents, and Grandma Nancy for all their help and support. We couldn't have made this happen without them. And, to Kim and Mike for hosting us. We couldn't have asked for better hosts.


At last - 49.9 Miles, 1308 of climb,  6 towns and 2 counties later - We can finally say we did a day of RAGBRAI!!