Country Views: Knee High Corn

The river is high!

Wednesday started out beautifully. It was cool, for July, and not very humid. The Sun was riding high in the sky, and the wind wasn't too bad either. To add to that, I was weary of The World. My soul was spent and I couldn't look at all the ugliness anymore. So, it was time to get outta the city and into the country. I was hoping to get recharged a bit.

I'm not one that can handle a lot of stressful stuff, and I've already mentioned that big city life isn't for me. Heck, even where I live is almost more than I can handle many days. Again- I admire anyone that can deal with big urban areas and even more so if you can handle what is happening these days with grace. I'm overwhelmed by it all. I needed to unplug for a bit. So, I figured why not bag some more roads in my quest to ride every gravel road in Black Hawk County? I stared at a map to get things burned into my brain, and by 10:00am I was on my bike and gone.

I decided to use the Black Mountain Cycles MCD since it was the bike set up with the Teravail Rutland 700c X 47mm tires I am testing for RidingGravel.com. The route I had intended on using took me along the Cedar River via bike paths. Since we had over 4" of rain the other day, everything is getting flooded if it lies low enough, or if it is a waterway. I didn't know the lay of the land where I was heading, so I knew there was a possibility for me to have to truncate my route. It almost happened going out on the bike path! The river was so high that many bridge under-passes were blocked, but fortunately I got through other ways. That was good and eventually I found myself on the outskirts of Evansdale, Iowa looking for a turn-off from the old four lane Highway 20 route.

This is a shoulder, or a gravel road with a pesky paved side path, depending upon your outlook. 

A new-to-me gravel road named Conrad Road. It probably is going to end up getting paved soon.

The first thing I needed to do was find my way to Conrad Road, which is a little over a mile long. It is just Northeast of Evansdale and when I reached it, I saw that there are signs this road is getting paved soon. There were bright, shiny fire hydrants at regular intervals in the South ditch, which tells me that this strip of land between Conrad Road and the old highway is getting developed into housing soon. Bummer! There are already some residents living out there. I cannot imagine that trading their peaceful rural existence for pavement and housing crammed into small lots is going to be an "improvement", but what-ev's. Follow the money. It is all about land developers and property taxes these days. Damn the rich farmland, Nature, and Peacefulness to hell, I guess. Sad!

The corn will be replaced with those roofs in the distance and a lot of pavement soon, I'm betting.

Barns for Jason #1

Conrad Road petered out on a paved road which I was obliged to ride on the shoulder of to Osage Road and then Eastward. This was all new to me. I recall years ago, before Osage Road was paved from the West out to this intersection, that it was gravel, and I got caught out on it riding a road bike. I ended up pinch-flatting that day. Once I reached this intersection with the North-South blacktop I remember being soooo relieved! Ha! Now I avoid pavement at all costs and relish the chance to see any gravel road I can by bicycle. How things have changed for me over the years!

Barns for Jason #2

Barns for Jason #3

Osage Road was pretty fast! The gravel had been beaten down to a point that it totally reminded me of Southeastern Minnesota roads. Sandy-ish and gritty. The hills were really gentle too, and I had a decent tailwind. Of course, I felt like a hero going East. That lasted until I had to turn South where Osage Road went back to pavement just before that road ran Eastward out of Black Hawk County and to the town of Jesup.

I did note that the corn was knee-high or taller out this way already. Pretty incredible when I think about how corn just South of town was barely canopied last weekend. Of course, it is entirely possible that corn is also knee-high by now. This hybrid, genetically modified corn grows so fast it is unbelievable.

Barns for Jason #4- The Old and The New

Barns for Jason #5

Once I reached the end of Osage Road, it was South on South Holgate Road to Dubuque Road where the next gravel south was offset from Holgate to the West just a bit and called Garling Road instead. I have to say that Black Hawk County might possibly have the most complicated naming scheme for roads of any county in the State of Iowa. Many are named after notable pioneers of the area, so they have historical significance, but keeping these all straight if you are an emergency responder must be difficult.

For instance, Garling Road dumps you out on an East-West gravel road alternately called Birdland Drive and Young Road. It's marked "Young Road" on the signage out in the country, but maps carry both names. I have no idea what the story is on that. At any rate, I went East to where the gravel truncates and turns to pavement a couple miles outside of Jesup, Iowa, and then I doubled back for the final gravel run-in to the city.

Wild day lilies are starting to pop in the ditches now.

A fat cow wades in some flooded pasture alongside Young Road.

Of course, there are all kinds of truncated roads and stubs of roads out here that I'll have to come back and tediously go back and forth over to get them "bagged" on my quest to ride all the gravel in the county. So, I'll be back out this way again soon, I hope. It actually is a decent little loop, and it isn't all that difficult to get out this way in reality.

Barns for Jason #'s 6,7, and 8.

Leaning against a gated Level C road looking West up Young Road

By the time I was heading back West, the wind had come up and the clouds with it. There was rain brewing, and I knew that the forecast had said that around 2:00pm it was supposed to be kicking in. That's the big reason why I couldn't be messing around bagging bits of road Wednesday. I just headed as fast as I could against that wind back towards the city.

I'll be back out this way again soon. Stay tuned......