The trucks with fancy fiberglass motorboats on their trailers started showing up around 3:00 AM. Ahhhhh, yes, that's why the Bass fishing trailer was set up near the shore; there's a big-time bass fishing tournament today! Dozed back into a fitful sleep until 4:40, when the heat lightning became so frequent, and the regular lightning and thunder started, that we decided to break camp. Sometimes heat lightning amounts to nothing, but we wanted to make sure our camping gear didn't get wet. In a stroke of perfect timing, the rain started right as we pulled out of our campsite. We drove, instead of biked, to Vermillion in a steady downpour, but it had dissipated by the time we got there. We found a cozy coffeeshop and caught up on some reading and writing.
The radar showed another line of storms on our heels, so we kept driving southeast to Sioux City, Iowa. We spent a good chunk of time at the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center there (again, with good timing, missing most of a downpour while there). Lewis & Clark camped there on their outbound journey, and the only fatality on the trip occurred there, Sergeant Charles Floyd, who died from a "bilious colic". Chances are it was peritonitis from a ruptured appendix, but they couldn't diagnose such a thing in 1804. There's a nice monument to Floyd on a bluff south of town.
Sioux City has a nice little downtown historic area, where we found a bar with something like eleventy-billion beers on tap (Buffalo Alice), and across the street from it, a nice Italian restaurant.
So yeah, the day was a washout from a bicycling perspective, but we had fun nonetheless!
The radar showed another line of storms on our heels, so we kept driving southeast to Sioux City, Iowa. We spent a good chunk of time at the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center there (again, with good timing, missing most of a downpour while there). Lewis & Clark camped there on their outbound journey, and the only fatality on the trip occurred there, Sergeant Charles Floyd, who died from a "bilious colic". Chances are it was peritonitis from a ruptured appendix, but they couldn't diagnose such a thing in 1804. There's a nice monument to Floyd on a bluff south of town.
Sioux City has a nice little downtown historic area, where we found a bar with something like eleventy-billion beers on tap (Buffalo Alice), and across the street from it, a nice Italian restaurant.
So yeah, the day was a washout from a bicycling perspective, but we had fun nonetheless!
I love how many people you're meeting and talking to on this trip. Virtues of taking the "slow road," even with headwinds!