Day 43: Toledo to Cedar River

Posted by: Arin

After a night of rain, we woke up dry and in good spirits. The ground had dried and the sky was clear. Since we hadn't set up our tent the night before, the morning went fairly smoothly. We still had plenty of water and went straight for the highway.

This was a day of ups and downs, literally. It felt like none of the road was flat. Other than a couple quick snack breaks we powered through the day and arrived in Cedar Rapids with a good 50 miles under our belts. For the second day in a row, the first grocery store we saw was a Fareway. After grabbing some food we made a stop at the laundromat.

Most of the laundry we've been doing has been at whomever's house we can find to stay at, but I do like stopping at laundromats. It's a nice chunk of time during the day where you just don't think about riding at all, plus I get a chance to catch up on writing this blog and eating some snacks. After a couple hours we were out of there and back on the road. We wanted to make the junction where Cedar River meets highway 30, another 8-10 miles down the road. We got there and found a perfect spot right by the river.

Despite my best efforts to cover up completely, I got eaten up by mosquitos. I had three or four really itchy bites. We cooked our dinner and got right in the tent to avoid more bug bites, and it was so nice out that we didn't even have to use the fly.