Herald-Whig Editor's Note: Laura Sievert, executive director of Arts Quincy, is participating in the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa or RAGBRAI. The 427-mile trip will have her pedal Sunday through Saturday from Council Bluffs to Keokuk, Iowa. Laura is blogging about her adventure and the home-baked pie along the way.
Day 3 can best be summed up with the word "perfect."
The Winterset to Indianola section of the route is the shortest day at only 40 miles, so with the whole day to go and only three-and-a-half hours on the bikes in front of us, it was the perfect time to have some fun.
I left Winterset at a leisurely time of 8 a.m. and pedaled the 16 miles to the most fun stop of the entire trip: Howell Nursery. This enormous tree farm is laid out as a family-fun stop in the fall with a corn mazes, pumpkins, goats and lots more.
oday, the place was packed with thousands upon thousands of cyclists and there were a hundred things to do. My personal favorite was the sweet corn cannon. You load an ear of sweet corn down a large pressurized tube, smash it with a loading stick and then fire it in the air. What was the target? Oh, three bicycles strung up 100 feet in the air between two grain silos! For the record, I hit one on my second shot (you get four), and they sound a buzzer and the whole crowd cheers.