Leg II: Fort Collins to Spirit Lake

Well, we're currently in Spirit Lake, IA recovering a bit from last nights celebration before heading to Tracy, MN tomorrow. We'll write more in our next post about the festivities, but first we should say something about the ride to get here and post some photos of the journey.

So, the route we had planned ran like this:

View Wedding Ride II in a larger map

And this is still essentially the route we stuck to, except that we changed a few of the places that we stayed at. A few by choice and a few due to necessity (e.g. we couldn't cross the Missouri near Niobrara because the road was flooded, so we crossed at Yankton instead). Some of the most notable things that happened on this part of the journey were that we road our first century (107 miles from Fort Collins to Sterling, CO), we had our first good dousing in a thunderstorm between Burwell and O'neill, NE, we broke 1,000 miles on our trip so far as we were riding between Freeman, SD and Rock Rapids, IA and we also crossed into our fifth state (Iowa). Finally, because of our route change due to the flooded Missouri, we got to stop in Rock Rapids and see my cousin Desiree and her one year old daughter Annen. It was a really hot ride, but we made pretty good time and had lots of fun. Anywho, here are some of the pictures from the trek:

Laura took this crazy photo of me leaping amongst the fireflies at our campsite in Broken Bow. Unfortunately the fireflies don't show up very well in the photo. Also unfortunate, our campsite was really close to some train tracks that kept us up during the night, but we got a few hours of sleep and our next location was much better.

From Broken Bow, we biked up to Burwell where we camped right next to the north fork of the Loup River in the city park. It was an excellent spot. This doe and two fawns came down for a drink towards sunset.

Laura poses by an old sod house at the park in Burwell.

Laura takes a break in the shade on this beautiful tree lined gravel road just south of O'neill, NE.

Coming into O'neill there was this great mural on the side of one of the buildings. With all the action taking place in this mural, it's hard to disagree with all the fun the Nebraskans must be having. The giant shamrock is because O'neill is the Irish capital of Nebraska, apparently. We did stay in a really great hotel here and had breakfast at a nice restaurant that both had an Irish influence.

This was taken at the top of one of the biggest hills we've climbed yet. And strangely it was in Nebraska, between Creighton and Bloomfield.

In Bloomfield after having some really good rolls at this local bakery, we biked east into this beautiful sunrise that took on different forms as we continued across Nebraska's rolling hills.

Here it is again.

That same day we crossed the Missouri at Yankton. Typically there wouldn't be any water around these trees.

Back into SD.

We had just a little bit of rain as we headed into Iowa. Here I am taking a break before heading down into the Big Sioux River Valley and crossing into Iowa.