Dubuque

When I was in high school we had a joke: Why does the Mississippi River flow south? Because Iowa sucks.  Now that I just spent the day in the third Iowa city we've visited since starting our trip, I can only say mea culpa.  If you don't know what that means, you likely weren't raised Catholic.  Mea culpa is an exclamation of apology or remorse that is used to mean "I apologize." So far Iowa people and towns have been very pleasant.

Since we started the loop, every day has felt like Saturday.  Our "rest" day Saturday here in Dubuque was no different.  The National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium is next door to our marina and had several outstanding exhibits on the entire river including the impacts of the river on the Gulf of Mexico.  Here is a shot of their ray tank in the rare moment when there weren't people petting them (taken from the 2nd level).

There were also boat building exhibits and a dredge that was open for tours.  The aquarium is definitely worth visiting if you're in Dubuque.

After a visit to a delightful yarn store (really, is there any other kind?!) to get yarn to make myself fingerless gloves for our cold fall mornings, we had a fantastic 20 mile bike ride through downtown Dubuque and then along the Heritage bike trail to Durango, IA and back.  The trail went on for another 25 miles but we chose to turn back because of the threat of thunderstorms later in the afternoon. I was asked how the bikes are working out - and the answer is great! We have a couple of Brompton C series. They fold up small enough to put in an overhead bin on a large plane and are 26 pounds.  That makes them easy to take on and off the boat.  And they take less than a minute to "fold" and "unfold."  Here are some shots I took of Tony folding his up after the ride.

The wheels have 16" diameter so we won't be breaking any speed records, but they ride very comfortably on gravel as well as asphalt and maneuver well as long as you don't take a sharp turn at high speed. They are well worth the weight/cargo space that they take up.

We ended our day out to dinner with the other MacGregor 26X owners in our marina that Tony mentioned we met when we pulled in yesterday.  They have been cruising the US inland waterways on and off for around 11 years and we had a great time comparing stories (they're also ocean sailors) and comparing various modifications and configurations of our MacGregor's.  We now have some ideas of things we might experiment as we are always trying to improve our fuel economy.