Blue Skies

Day 38: Sioux Center to Algona

August 13, 2008 on 6:38 pm | In On Tour |

It was raining outside when I headed out from the Dordt dormitory. I had taken in my gear bag, since we needed to use our own sleeping bags and pillows overnight. Fortunately they already had a tarp to protect the gear bags from the rain until they could be loaded onto the gear truck later in the day. From what I understand, there may have been local volunteers to help load the gear truck to allow the sweep team an earlier start on a long day. The distance for the day was 113 miles or 181 kilometers.

A few cyclists had some minor health issues and requested to be dropped further along the route in order to make the day shorter. We loaded up their bikes, and with Jonathan along for more pictures, we headed out. The first order of business was to go to the Dutch shop for coffee and pastries. From there we headed almost due east.

The roads in the area were arranged in a one mile by one mile grid, but we couldn’t simply follow one road due east since sections would be gravel. There was alot of one mile hops north and south to skirt around gravel sections. Two churches welcomed us and put out refreshments at parks along the route, at 15 and 30 miles along the route respectively. This worked out really well, since we could then position the SAG vehicles further along the route.

Once we dropped off our two cyclist passengers, we continued along to mark the second half of the route. Unfortunatly, since it had been raining on and off for a good portion of the morning the first few marks got a little washed out by the water on the road. A bit further on, the roads dried up and marking the route went alot better.

With the overcast lighting conditions in the morning, Jonathan got some great photo shots. You can see some of them at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonathantimothystoner . By mid-afternoon the sky had cleared up and we were left with a beautiful blue sky and a cool day, a great change from the heat we suffered going through Nebraska.

We took a group photo at the end of the day in Algona. The previous two days had other activities in the evening that interfered, so this was the first chance in the week to take it, but because it was such a long distance there were a number of people that came in later that had to choose between showering right away or being in the photo. Overall, people had a good day, and were tired but happy.