Today was one of our more difficult cycling days, if you can say we’ve had any yet!  We had the most elevation gain so far (that means … hills).  We also had headwinds for part of the day.  But if that’s not enough, somebody (Jon) used the wrong maps to create the route and we ended up on a total of 3 km of gravel roads where we had to walk the bike.  We would have had more, but we figured out how to make a new route directly on the GPS (rather than using the computer), and saved the rest of the day.

 

But perhaps what will be more memorable for us is that this was our “Chicken” day.  In the morning we rode past farm after farm of chickens – all ranging free.  We thought that we had come across some confinement farms until our road took us behind one of the buildings and we saw that there were doors on the back of the building where the chickens could come outside and run around.

 

We are continuing to ride through farmland, perhaps a little too similar to Iowa.  The hills are getting larger, but even some parts of Iowa have that.  If nothing else – it sure smells like Iowa around here!  J