Today was a pleasant ride on small Iowa roads, passing through multiple hamlets. I ended at Walnut which proclaims itself as Iowa’s Antique City. The weather was much more pleasant than it would have been yesterday: overcast for the initial two thirds and only becoming slightly warm at the end. I continue to be impressed with the patience of Iowa drivers.

Sunrise has slowly been creeping later as I go further west and as it becomes later in the year. I was on the road just a few minutes before sunrise and cycled to the main intersection in town. From here, I would follow a sequence of county roads as they went parallel to the railroad and through the small settlements.

Menlo was the first settlement. There wasn’t much other than a sign and a few houses.

Familiar issue, road closed at Iowa 25. A detour via paved routes could add considerably to the distance. Cars can go via the interstate, but that isn’t an option for a bicycle. So let’s see the closure…

They were busy working on replacing a bridge. No workers (not sure what would have happened yesterday on a Friday vs. today as Saturday). I lifted my bike over and around some barriers and surfaces and was through. Hooray!

Casey was slightly bigger than Menlo and even had a convenience store.

I joined up with historic route 6 which I believe ran from the Santa Monica pier to Cape Cod at one point. Some years ago, I read books on the Lincoln Highway (mostly US 30 today) and also cycled the route from Cheyenne to Cedar Rapids. I remember Iowa was interesting because there were multiple parallel east/west options for routing a coast-to-coast highway and multiple railroads on these routes. The Coast to Coast Highway (US 6) and the Lincoln Highway were competitors and picked different choices across Iowa. This is in contrast with Nebraska where there was much more consolidation around one east/west route following the Platte River valley for highways (US 6, US 30), railroads, the Oregon Trail, etc.

Site of the first train robbery in the west by Jesse James and gang…

Anita even had a downtown. Took a short break here.

One last picture of the sign before leaving

Atlantic was a larger town with many more prominent buildings including their Carnegie Library.

Roads west of Atlantic with a few more rolling hills.

Walnut bills itself as Antique City. Downtown has antique stores and not much else interesting. Overall a nice ride with reasonable weather. I was checking RAGBRAI which finishes today. They had two warm days of riding and last night a storm with gusty winds came through. This sent some to shelter out the storm and later look to find tents, etc. Hope all turns out OK.