This morning the intrepid travelers were all up and moving well ahead of the appointed time. I guess we’ve all worked too many years in jobs where the normal starting time was 7:00AM. We thought we would meet for whatever they served as breakfast around 8:30. It turned out that by 8:30 we were already 10 miles down the road. By the way breakfast was a very small apple, a granola bar, and a bottle of water in a brown paper bag. Not exactly what I was looking for.

We thought a better plan might be to go a while down the road and see what we could find for a decent breakfast. In these situations, I pull up a list of restaurants on the Harley GPS and take my chances on one of the available local eateries. We hit the jackpot today. There was a gentleman coming out the door as we un-helmeted. “Is the food good here” was our first question. He (name of Larry) told us the food was excellent and proceeded to escort us back inside. He proudly announced that the staff should take care of us because we were travelers and friends of his. This is my kind of town.

The Tipton Family Restaurant was the perfect breakfast spot. We told the server we were friends of Larry and he would be right back to pay our bill but she didn’t appear to believe us. She said she knows Larry and he wouldn’t buy anyone’s breakfast including his own. Thanks Larry and the staff at Tipton Family Restaurant for a very enjoyable time.

The first and only “planned” stop of the day was the National Motorcycle Museum in Anamosa, Iowa. It was only 30 miles away from Tipton. Well, it should have been 30 miles away. After our gravel experience yesterday, no one trusted me to find a way around the “road closed” sign so we followed the designated detour. Wow – the detour took us about 35 miles out of our way so instead of a short jaunt, we rolled 65 miles into the Museum.

We enjoyed looking at all of the old hardware and spent time reminiscing about each of our first “real” motorcycle. (Mini-bikes and bicycles with baseball cards in spokes do not count.)

The last time I was through this area, we bypassed this Museum due to nearby storms. This time we needed to cool our heels for 15 or 20 minutes to avoid the approaching storm. Although there was a lot of rain around, sitting still for a little while paid off (we are all retired so we practice this on a daily basis).

The rest of the day was spent riding past a lot of Iowa corn. Some tall, some short, some so dark green it was almost black but trust me – they have a lot of corn here. (No pictures required.)

The temperature approached the mid-90’s as we rolled on fighting a 25 to 30 mph cross wind. What fun. The bikes all ran great. The riders all melted a little as we ended our 300 mile day. We still had enough energy to get back on the bikes after the hotel check-in and had some good food at the El Rancho Grande here in Carroll, Iowa.

We were a little bit uncomfortable in the restaurant. It was packed and really loud but the big issue for each of us is that there was no limited capacity, no masks, and not much social distancing (I still don’t like that term). We are still nervous about exposure to this blasted virus but it seemed that we were the only ones that were.

Tomorrow we are headed for the World’s Only Corn Palace. Hmmm, big surprise – it’s not in Iowa.