Take Me to the River, Dip Me in the Water.

John riding with his cup of coffee.

There was such a big build-up to my special day, that writing about my actual birthday seems kind of like an after thought.

We woke-up and packed up our campsite and headed to Prairie du Chien. We decided we were going to ride as much of the Great River Road as we could. We had read that it was beautiful and scenic and not too scary with traffic. We found out that it wasn't really the case, but we started with high hopes.

We headed out North on the Great River Road. At first the traffic wasn't too bad and there was a pretty wide bike lane. As we rode, the traffic got worse and worse the bike lane got skinnier and it was half on pavement with big gauges on it and half on cement with big grates every half mile. We had semi's zipping past us at over 55 miles per hour and so John had us pull-off.

We stopped by some railroad tracks while John tried to check things out on his phone. It didn't look like the traffic was going to get any better, so we decided to turn back and give up on the Great River Road. It was just too dangerous.

It's too bad, because it was really beautiful and the other side of the road had a pretty nice bike lane and the traffic didn't seem half as bad going back into Prairie du Chien.

There were also big beached boats on the way back. We got in 15 miles on the bike, so I guess that was something...

We weren't sure what to do instead of riding, but we saw that the town of Manchester was on the way back to Iowa City.

I have wanted to go there for a while. They turned the river that runs through their town into a white water park and it was so damn cool.

We thought about getting some tubes to float down the river, but the rental place wasn't open for another half hour, so we just swam instead and got lunch at a deli.

Old people using technology out in the sun...

We were both kind of antsy to get back home, so we made our way back to Iowa City.

The cats were waiting for us and extremely needy. We unpacked some and I worked in the garden some, but then we decided to go see the new Jurassic Park movie. It was entertaining, but not all that believable. We went to Shorts for dinner and I was so exhausted, I fell asleep watching Ballykiss Angel on TV. Looking back on my big, birthday, weekend, I was reminded of how extremely lucky I am. I have the privilege of turning 53 years old and a life that I never knew I could have when I was younger.

So, next week, we head out on OOBRAI.  I hope to have plenty more adventures to write about on the blog.