“The imp of mischief is a restless sprite.” – Washington Irving

I usually try to write for the blog as we go -but it didn’t work out that way this time.  I’m playing catch-up from home.  One interesting result of not writing day by day is that I’m able to reflect on it in a “bigger picture” sort of way.  Thus the quote…

A bit of tongue in cheek Googling helped me narrow down an explanation for the almost daily strange annoyances we experienced to us having an “imp” problem.  In folklore, the imp plays harmless or annoying practical jokes on people, but isn’t trying to harm them. Yep… I’m pretty sure we had a mischievous imp with us this time!

But let me start at the beginning:

We finally found some time to return to our MRT project after four years!  We ended our last segment in Burlington, IA in 2022.  We seem to unintentionally be making it an “every four years” type of thing…although to be fair, our attempt to pick up a segment in 2024 was canceled due to flooding along the Mississippi.    

There are a lot of moving parts for planning this type of ride.  Mike and I drove to the Quad Cities in Iowa and had my sister Nicky fly there to join us. She would fly home from Nashville, Tennessee at the end of our trip.  We like to have a “sag” car along with us in case of emergency.  We jokingly refer our sag driver as our “hag”.  There were two volunteer “hags” for this year’s trip, but the logistics worked better to have Nicky behind the wheel this time.  

We arrived in Iowa a day before Nicky’s flight so that we could visit a friend of ours from the Rumble (paddling trip) years.  He likes to wander the backroads and we went for a ride to Bellevue, Iowa, a river town. We’ve been there before via kayak -the car was faster!  We stopped for a cold brew -I chose Lock 12 Lager- and dinner at River Ridge Brewing and admired the scenery.

That is lock 12 in the background.

After we ate, we went up to Bellevue State Park to see the view.  I never get tired of seeing the Mississippi,

The next day, we picked Nicky up at the airport and spent a little more time visiting our friend.  Too soon, it was time to head to Burlington, Iowa -1.5 hours drive South- to get ready to ride.  And… to experience our first weird situation.

When we arrived at our hotel – I was a bit more than mystified.  It was the wrong hotel!  Somehow I’d booked a completely different hotel than planned.   We were supposed to leave directly from the original hotel the next day, following the route I’d programmed into our bike GPS’.  It wasn’t an option to fix the route on the GPS’ -which we rely on to keep us on the route.

After checking in, our next mission was finding dinner.  We spotted an Applebee’s nearby and figured it would be quick and easy.  Instead, it was like we stepped into a Twighlight Zone episode.  It became obvious that the restaurant was on “meltdown mode” and the staff were trying to put a good face on it, but failing miserably.  We waited forever for service, forever to order, and another “forever” and still did not get food.  We finally decided enough was enough and, with apologies, walked out and found somewhere else to eat.

Burlington, IA to Keokuk, IA – 47.5 Miles

The next morning we woke up to rain…sigh.  Luckily, it wasn’t heavy and it didn’t last all day.  Because of my hotel snafu, we decided to shuttle ourselves to the Port of Burlington Welcome Center, and start exactly where we left off in 2022.

It took a while to set up our bikes with the lights, water bottles, and bike bags, GPS…etc.. (which would have been done in our hotel room the night before if we’d been in the right hotel !!)

This is Nicky and Mike waiting for me to get my act together!

After a lot of fiddling around (perhaps mostly by me?), it was time for our official departure picture.

The original route had us riding past the Port of Burlington Welcome Center after leaving the hotel, so I’m OK with our official start being at the Port of Burlington. Though we didn’t start where I’d planned to, the GPS usually can pinpoint where we are and guide us from there. 

Within the first couple of miles, we encountered our first “road closed”.  There were no signs before we got to it and no detour information.  We had to make it up as we went to get around that spot -but we did. 

Our route for the day was mostly down US 61, also known as the Great River Road.  Our scenery was mostly this:

It is a divided highway with narrow shoulders.  We had enough room to feel OK riding.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to see along the way.

Along the way, we’d been hoping for a gas station rest stop opportunity, but just weren’t seeing any.  We finally saw a sign for a roadside park – but after following the entrance for a ways off the road, we found out there weren’t any useful facilities…so on we went.

That’s Mike down the entrance road, but there was a curve and more road before the actual park.

Eventually, the route took us off the busy highway and onto quieter roads for a while.  After about 10 miles, we did have to ride through a busy town called Fort Madison.  While getting through the town, the GPS kept giving us some wrong turns.  At one point it wanted us to turn the wrong way onto a one-way street.  We didn’t and that caused the GPS to keep trying to make us turn around to get back on the route.  We had to stop a few times to check the maps on my phone to get to a point where we could rejoin the route safely.  Fortunately, I had an idea of what road we needed to find to do that.

Down the road, we passed through this small town.  They had some interesting murals.

As we got closer to Keokuk, we turned onto a road with light traffic that more closely followed the river.

First glimpse of the river since that morning.

We saw an MRT sign that said… Begin MRT.  Begin???

We rode our last few miles through a pretty forested area.

Then we popped out into a residential area of Keokuk and rode through neighborhoods until we pulled up at the hotel.

It felt good to be starting another section of the MRT, but it wasn’t the most exciting day of riding we’ve ever had.  We were happy it didn’t rain much after we got started in the morning.  As always, it is nice to have all the miles for the day behind us.

Categories: Burlington, Iowa