Muscatine, Iowa - Until about 18 hours ago, I was having a very bad week.
Things started off well enough, I suppose. I had great fun in Minneapolis, and through a series of minor miracles I was able to bike out of the city on a self-designed route without getting either majorly lost or dead. (Minor miracle: When you find yourself staring down a massive cloverleaf freeway interchange, you randomly pick an exit ramp to follow, and it leads directly to the road you were looking for.)
After Minneapolis, the route veers south, mostly paralleling the Mississippi. This made for some tough riding, as the roads along the river are heavily trafficked and unpleasant, and the ones that veer off the river invariably climb up giant bluffs for miles on end. Granted, some of the views from the top were phenomenal; it was just the getting there that proved difficult, especially when the temperatures started to approach triple digits.
In addition to tough riding, I found myself drained by a series of really lousy campgrounds along the river. Overcrowded, overpriced, cramped, smelly, fly-infested, filled with either unbelievably loud children or even more unbelievably loud drunken partiers (with their even more unbelievably loud fireworks, which they invariably set off at about midnight.) I couldn't get to sleep at night and I was hurtling through astronomical temperatures and often strong headwinds during the day. And to top it off, the replacement wheel I got for the bike in Minnesota keeps blowing spokes on me. My spirits were at a low ebb.
In the middle of this, I crossed into Iowa. And its a pity, because under most circumstances I would have absolutely loved this stretch. The northeastern corner of the state is actually very hilly, and seems to consist of an unending series of panoramas of farmland, cute little farmhouses, and roads sloping off gently to the horizon. It's been like a 200-mile long postcard. And the towns in Iowa have been like traveling a century back in time. They're pleasant, orderly, compact and unbelievably clean. It's like Main Street USA at Disneyland, except real.
But I was in no condition to enjoy any of this. The trip was becoming a trudge.
Finally, last night, after a long day's ride and two different broken spokes, I pulled into the Massillon County Park. The $5 campground was just a grassy field tucked into the woods with water, outhouses, and a picnic shelter. And I had it all to myself.
I sat for most of the evening under the shelter, watching as a violent thunderstorm neared, threatened, then blew right by with nary a drop of rain on me. As the sky darkened, I watched as the field and woods filled with fireflies, dozens of them, more than I have ever seen in my life. The air had cooled down, the bugs weren't biting, and in the dusk Iowa was suddenly perfect. Tears - of exhaustion, joy, relief, I don't even know what - rolled down my face. It was like everything I had been missing in this trip - solitude, beauty, silence - had visited me all at once. I could feel a corner being turned, one that had been a long time coming.
Now 41 miles later, I still haven't gotten my spoke problem taken care of. But it's 20 degrees cooler, the wind isn't (quite) in my face, and I feel like I've just stepped out of a long tunnel. It took a while, but Iowa won me over in the end.