I woke early at the Arrowhead campground, struck my tent, packed my gear, drank a quart of powdered milk, and got rolling in the dark. But before I started putting in the hard miles, I stopped at the Maverik gas station by I-80 to chase that camp milk with some hot breakfast.
“What’s in a MOAB Burrito?” I asked the gas station cook.
“Mother Of All Burritos,” she replied and listed the variety of things stuffed inside, none of them vegetabular material other than potato.
I ignored the brand redundancy and had a darn good breakfast on the gas station curb. The burrito was big enough that I could only down half of it at my first sitting. I got an extra piece of foil to keep the remainder warm, tucked it in my handlebar bag, and saved the rest to eat on my first break up the road, in Persia.
Gravel roads are more interesting. I see more interesting farms and fields and creeks and shelter belts and other surprises from gravel than I do from the highway. But gravel roads are also hillier, and climbing hills with a bike loaded for camping gets tiring. As I approached Denison around lunchtime, I felt exhausted. (Extra hill to climb right in the center of town didn’t help!) I considered calling it a day and just checking into a motel to give my legs and butt some extra rest.
But that was just the MOAB burrito talking… or more accurately, the absence thereof. I burned it all up on my morning ride and did a bad job of replenishing my calories from my onboard snacks as I continued north.
Enter Pizza Ranch.
Salad, chicken, mashed potatoes and corn (always together on my plate), pizza, cheesy sticks, more potatoes and corn, and Pepsi Pepsi Pepsi, which, strangely enough and contrary to any sensible health advice, felt really good on my tongue and on my tummy.
But mashed potatoes. I think mashed potatoes are my best fuel for a bike ride.
I left the chill of Pizza Ranch Denison (the service was warm and friendly, but when you’ve been outside all morning in 80+ degree temps, and your body is coming down from the constant exertion of 4+ hours of peddling, air-conditioning feels really cold!), climbed back on the bike, and headed back to the highway. I rode the gravel shoulder for just a half minute to let a big green combine get around me, but I had mostly pavement through Deloit, Kiron, a rest stop in a freshly mown ditch…
And then I saw it, a sign:
I can’t ignore that sign… and it points to miles and miles of gravel!
Now the problem out on Cory Ave is that there’s not really much in the way of lodging. Neola to Denison was 53 miles give or take. Storm Lake was another 50 miles away, and even with the good calories of mashed potatoes, I wasn’t sure I’d have all 50 of those miles in me this Sunday. This is why I bring my tent, so if I do get out 10–20 miles from anywhere and just can’t crank another hill, I can camp out behind someone’s shelter belt and rest up for the next day.
But I figured, well, just keep cranking. We’ll see how far we get.
The mashed potatoes and Pepsi smiled on me. The sky smiled on me, rolling in some clouds to give me some cool shade, but never turning to rain or worse. Cory Avenue smiled on me, giving me plenty of smooth, packed tracks and no overwhelming hills.
And then, there was Storm Lake:
I peeled off my sweaty gear, hung my clothes out to dry, took a really long, hot shower (maybe not quite in that order, but you know what I mean), and enjoyed a mostly restful night in Storm Lake, Iowa.