July 19 - July 25 - Onawa to Dubuque, IA - 440 miles because I did bonus miles on Day 5. Things we have learned in the past few days: RAGBRAI doesn't have 50 thousand riders, as I had been led to believe by.....I don't know....the internet. There are about 20K actual registered paid riders. There are approximately the same number of support staff. There is some unknown number of miscreants and ne'er-do-wells who ride along but fail to support the sytem....for reasons. So what

Something like 220 miles over 4 days. I'm losing interest in accuracy about these things. Driving back from Wind Cave to Bassett was a quick trip and fun to see other parts of South Dakota. We still came South and retraced our steps along HWY 20 in Nebraska and eventually returned to Bassett, NE. The weather had turned hot again (90F+), but it still felt doable to make 50 miles into O'Neill, NE. Bunny made it before me and noticed that there was a shamrock painted in the midd

7/8/26-7/10/26 - 0 miles by bike. Lots of miles by van. After leaving Hidden Paradise and returning to the park at Ainsworth, I took a swim in the local pool. Totally refreshing to watch town kids riding their bikes through town to the pool by themselves or in groups. A totally cool grandpa brought his two grandkids down in a red convertible GTO. The kids probably have no idea how cool their granddad is. Bunny and I talked about the next few days and the amount of time we had

7/6/26 - 7/7/26 - 70 miles over 2 days based in Ainsworth, NE Celebrations during the 4th had resulted in a little furriness in my brain July 5th. The bunny and I looked at each other and decided that we had the ability to take some time, so we decided to take an extra day and engage in some minor retail therapy and housekeeping. We spent the day hitting a local laundromat to clean clothes and bedding, did some financial stuff, and then hit the local western wear store to cow

6/30/26 - 7/4/26 - 220 miles over 4 days. 70, 50, 45, and 45. If Wyoming is flat, then Nebraska is flatter. Actually, that is a lie. There are some interesting rock formations and elevation changes in Nebraska, but they are few and far between. A mesa near Crawford, NE. Is it Black Mesa? No. But there is far more of this. Grass land with an old school windmill pumping from a well to water cattle herds. What I notice about Nebraska the most is the weather going through cycles

6/27-6/29 - 213 miles 13-14 hours of seat time over '3' days. Wyoming, you're flat. I've seen your cows and horses Faster pace is nice I don't mean to denigrate Wyoming but the views are pretty similar no matter where you look. There are some hills in the distance from time to time, but mostly you are surrounded by scrub grass fields, the occasional herd of cattle, and that's about it. Do you know what these fences that can't contain cows are for? The winds that had been blow

6/26/26 - 66 miles - Can't remember the hours of seat time The goal for the day was to get all the way south to Shoshoni where the route would turn to the East towards Nebraska. We would stop in Thermopolis for a break and maybe take a dip in a hot spring. The ride started out nice enough and I engaged in a bunch of questionable wildlife photography. I finally caught one of the weirdo white tail deer on camera, but a significant distance so the colors are pretty washed out. Y

6/25/26 - 73 miles - 5.5 hours of seat time. Double Rainbow! Harbinger of the day. I put Crank Brothers 'egg beater' pedals on my bicycles. These clipped pedals are traditionally used by mountian bike riders becasue they deal well with sticky/muddy environments. More important for me is that they allow a lot of 'float', meaning that I can roatate my heels laterally and let my knees move more naturally through pedal strokes than I can using Shimano SPD pedals. The pedals utili

6/24/26 - 92 miles - 7 hours seat time There are a number of ways to navigate this sort of journey. One would be to just use the GART web site and work with Google Maps to sort of emulate that general track. I did this throughout Washington. Another way is to use tracks provided on a GPS app on your phone or stand alone Garmin. The Rails to Trails Conservancy and the Adventure Bike Association made a set of GPS routes from St. Regis MT, and Lusk, Wy. I've been using those rou

6/23/26 - 50 miles. 3.3 hours seat time. Woke up early and mist was on the Yellowstone. Eat your heart out Ansel Adams. It was actually much prettier and magical than this picture conveys. The winds had died and stayed more or less calm the entire day. Bunny headed out to Itch Ka Pee campground in Columbus which does not do reservations. It's community supported and only asks for donations. First come first served. She beat feet for the campground right after fixing the fresh

6/22/26 - 55 miles. 5 hours of seat time. Morning started slowly. Bunny ran me down out of Battle Ridge campground to Jackson Creek Road, where I would have a brief early climb for the day. Riding through this area let me know where the slightly less affluent people made their little gentlemen's ranches. There's even a wolf sanctuary along this road. I moo for cows. So you know I howled for wolves. Bunny's making lists of things to do/places to stay when we come back this way

6/21/26 - 10 miles. Less than an hour of seat time. A 'zero day' is a day when long distance hikers or bike riders intentionally make no progress and rest up/resupply. And that was the intent for the day. Stay up late reading Mistborn. Get up late and write posts. Eventually go into town and do laundry and have a meal that someone else cooked. And it would have been that but I discovered that 86 out of Boseman was the intended route for the beginning of the next day. So we ro

6/20/26 – 50 miles 4.5 hours seat time. Relatively early start his morning after forgetting my glasses. HWY 2 regains a reasonable shoulder after the entrance to the Lewis and Clark Cavern State Park, and traffic is really light on a Saturday morning. It was nice to see a couple of monuments and stopping places named for the person who actually made Lewis and Clark's expedition a moderate success. I think it should be made a little more obvious that two white dudes probably w

6/19/26 – 55 miles – 5 hours seat time. The day started out with a shuttle back to where the previous day had ended. It looked to the time, like I had two hill climbs in front of me. But it only turned out to be one, and it was relatively small. That 'tower' on the right is the giant smelter stack in Anaconda, MT. The land around here is beautiful, but often quite poisonous with mining/smelting production byproducts leaching into the topsoil. On the other side of the hill was

June 18 - 60 miles 5 hours seat time. Eventually this trip will involve Ragbrai, which was a bucket list item in and of itself. But this means that I need to be in Onawa, IA on, or preferably before July 18, 2026. At the end of today, I will have 28 days to get to Onawa. I have about 1250 miles to get there. If I ride every day, I must average 44 miles. to get rest days I must average 55-60 miles. Or I could just ride my ride and whatever happens....happens. Weather has been

June 17 - 57 miles. 4.5 hours of seat time. Dissonance of Speed Traveling faster is Not A journey well spent When we left Missoula 16 days ago, we had originally thought the trip home by van would take 2 days. But as we got onto I90 we realized we could make the trip in a day. Though we didn't follow the whole of the ridden route, we traveled through so many different points that I had previously ridden through slowly and it struck me that traveling by car can give you a sort

I had intended to write something like this on the evening I finished Washington, but that day had its own little exhausting drama. We are back at home to do some family things, some of which were planned for before this all started and some that were not. The point is family comes first, and always should. Still, there has been down time to finish that last post for Montana and reflect on lessons learned. Don't overthink the bike. I know I'm not doing this the way a true bik

June 1 - 47 miles - 4ish hours of seat time Rain taps on van roof The will to ride wavers now It's warm in the bed The stretch goal for this time period was to get to Butte, MT. There are two or three more large hill climbs like Snoqualmie before I get to the Midwest plains, and knocking one more of them out would be a great accomplishment. That said, the minimum bar is to get to Missoula. This will be almost 750 miles since the beginning of the trip and a decent stop/start

May 31 - 49 miles, 4.25 hours of seat time. The inclement weather persisted, but the beauty just continues on and on. The road surfaces on the dirt roads were ever so slightly greasy/muddy but it wasn't wet enough to become sloppy. The trail out of Haugan Over the next couple of days I would encounter places where local landowners felt they should be able to block the rail trail. It's not clear to me whether this is legal or not, and frankly the only time I hop fences/gates i

May 30 - 52 miles - 6+ hours seat time The weather turned a little over night. There was a light drizzle in the air. When we started to move around, a group of boys and a couple of middle aged chaperones were unloading a trailer full of bikes and getting ready to head out on an adventure for the day. I got into colder weather gear and headed out to finish up the Trail de Coeur d'Alenes. Shortly after passing through the town of Kellogg, ID the trail starts to parallel I-90 pr