The weather didn’t cooperate on Labor Day — it rained in the morning in Lanesboro – so we scrapped our original plan to ride a third leg of the Root River Trail (from Lanesboro to Fountain , or another option – Lanesboro to Preston or Harmony) and drove south to sunnier skies and another bike trail in Iowa. We found both – sort of (there was sun but also thunder, lightening and clouds in the distance that fortunately didn’t result in rain) – in Riceville, Ia, where we hopped on the very pleasant Wapsi-Great Western Line Trail, riding through forested corridors lining corn fields and then through open cornfields, past Amish farms. There was scenery to delight both me as a Michigan native (a rare, for Iowa, strand of Birch trees) and Dirck, as a native Kansan (prairie, with yellow and purple flowers.)
prairie grass!
To do a loop, we did have to ride on a country road but noticed that some Amish cyclists we passed were taking the same approach as us – riding in the oncoming traffic lane so we could see the rare car coming our way and get out of the way. It seemed safer than having the traffic to our back, even if it may have taken the oncoming driver by surprise.
Birch trees!
TakeBetsywithyou 