Weather: great; views: awesome; packs of angry dogs: not so awesome

(Susan here)

The eponymous street name:

Iowa continues to provide the hilliest, steepest terrain we’ve encountered so far on our trip. However, since we’re in better shape now, there’s no hint of rain, and the winds are calm, it’s really not that huge of a deal. Also, it’s kind of awesome to have 2-mile descents, even if it did mean you were making a big climb to get to the top. We started out the day pretty far west of the Mississippi in Elkader and jogged back in to the river, hitting it in Marquette, IA and mostly following it along the Great River Road up to Lansing, IA, where we are tonight. (Or last night, by the time this post gets published.) The farmland to the west of the river is hilly in its own right, but the numerous small rivers that empty into the Mississippi, cutting their way through the huge bluffs lining the big river, really do make some hills. Our two biggest, longest climbs today were between Harpers’ Ferry, IA and Lansing.

At the top of the first of those two climbs, I met a pack of about a dozen dogs, who started barking en masse when they saw Brice go by but then sprinted out onto the road at full speed when they saw me. They were some sort of border collie-looking breed, except smaller. They surrounded my bike on all sides, barking and biting at my wheels. I tried yelling “hey!” at them as loud as I could, but it didn’t work. I was thinking three things simultaneously: One: Is my rabies vaccination from 2004 still good? Two: Are they less likely to bite me if I pedal slowly or quickly? Three: Is there any way I could possibly be held liable if a truck comes by right now and runs them over? Around that time, Brice got close again and let out one loud, deep, “Aaaaaauuuuuughhhhhh!!!!!” and most of them fell back. Two more yells and the rest left me alone, plus I was at the downhill part finally. I can’t yell nearly that loud, but I used to be able to do a pretty good horror-movie quality high-pitched scream so I’ll try that if I’m unfortunate enough to have a next time with another pack.

Another observation about the farmland around here, besides the hilly scenicness of it, is that there seem to be a lot of farms. Every half-mile abouts there’s a house surrounded by the various outbuildings. In Illinois, the individual farms are definitely much much farther apart. Although there do seem to be plenty of corn/soybean farms around, there’s also a lot of livestock, as Brice noted yesterday, plus a lot of hay fields. Must be nice to farm something where you don’t need quite as much land to be profitable and actually can have neighbors.

Side note: We met an old guy in a convenience store in Harpers’ Ferry, where we had stopped for our mid-afternoon pop and ice cream break, who asked us where we were biking to and from. Upon hearing the answer, he told us, “My condolences.”

Here’s some more pictures:

Small-town life:

Animal tracks: /em> (On one of our climbs, there was a slew of animal tracks that had been made when the cement was still wet. There seems to have been some epic small-mammal drama going on. Since clearly we have friends who seem to know so much about wild animals, what critters left these footprints?)