"I live in a beach house with 5 girls, you can always stay with us!" - Day 17

Got up this morning at 6, broke camp and were on the road by 7:30. The rolling hills of Iowa were tough, and the roads were bumpy, had no shoulder and decent semi traffic. Combine that with the smell of the pig farms and it made for a taxing day.

Our modus operandi has been to go into convenience stores and choose food that offers the highest calorie content per dollar. This means eating a lot of donuts, trail mix, pastries and other scurmptious foodstuffs. This morning, we discovered granola bars for $0.25 that offered 210 calories. That's 840 calories for a dollar. Admittedly our boiled potatoes at the beginning of the trip were better, but these granola bars are sure tasty!

In between Remsen and Correctionville, we saw a lady running with a dog on the hill in front of us. As we passed, she shouted "he's not mine!" and continued on her way. Wanting for company, and not having seen a dog in a while, I encouraged our furry black friend to join us. The dog proceeded to chase us for the next mile and a half, gaining steadily on us on the up hills and losing ground on the down hills. Eventually he broke off when he found some construction workers on the side of the road.
We stopped for lunch in Schleswig, where we were also able to use the internet at the public library to check the weather. We could see storms brewing to the southwest and watched on the radar as they passed over Denison. By the time we got underway again, the storm was well clear of our zigzagging path towards Des Moines. The greasy hamburgers from Cheeta's didn't treat us well though, so we slowed it down in the afternoon.
My hungry caterpillar mode struck again in Manning, where we stopped at a grocery store and I once again indulged myself with two peaches and a plum in the parking lot. There, we started talking to Mary and Zack, who gave us directions on where to camp and a Rails to Trails route to Des Moines. Eventually, they invited us over to their house for hamburgers!
Once we got indoors, they realized that in order to survive dinner, they'd probably have to offer us showers too. After a delightful dinner with them and Zack's friend, Pat, we took siezed the opportunity of internet access and cell phone chargers to lay out our plan for the end of the trip. Travis' friend in New York wasn't working out, so I contacted my friend, Jocelyn. She was excited to hear about our trip and when I hinted that we were looking for a place to stay, she replied with the wonderful text: I live in a beach house with 5 girls, you can always stay with us!" Needless to say, we changed our destination from New York City to the beach house in Stamford, Connecticut.

Pat escorted us in his truck to the local campground where the mosquitoes weren't bad at all. We've got two days of housing to look forward to in Des Moines and Davenport and after looking at the map today, think we'll have about 10 days left after Davenport.

Time	Trip	Odometer	Average	Max
8:58:52	117.0	1859	12.9	37.0