R&R in the Center of America

Sorry that it has been a while since our last post -- we have done a lot of relaxing and not too much biking. The whirlwind drive from New Mexico to Iowa went by in a flash. In just 24 hours we nearly doubled the distance we had traveled for the entire ride (cars are amazing).  We left the desolate southwest landscape, watched the sun set over the Rockies and when it rose we were driving through fields in the mid-west.  Quite the change of scenery in such a relatively short amount of time. We returned the rental car in Omaha with an hour to spare and then found a park and napped for a few hours until we were picked up.

We are currently staying in Orange City with my sister, Julie, and her husband, Tim. It has been a really wonderful past few days full of fresh homemade bread, and delicious food in general. We went into Sioux Center yesterday to find a bike shop because we were doing some bike maintenance and found 2 broken spokes on the rear wheel that needed some attention. We spent the day wandering around the town and reading in the library, we also experienced our first tornado warning later in the afternoon. Julie got off from work a little early and came to pick us up and then we stopped in at the post office for a minute. While we were sending out some mail the tornado warning sirens went off and we took shelter in the back of the post office with the other customers that were in there at the time.  It was neat to see what goes on behind the closed doors of the postal system. Within a matter of minutes it went from a blue sunny day to a incredibly dark, windy and raging thunderstorm. We were quite thankful that we weren't biking through the middle of nowhere during that storm.

Today we have been on a Cinco de Mayo theme full of homemade cheddar and jalapeno bagels, tortillas, salsa, bean dip, sangria, and other wonderfully festive foods. The time here has flown by and tomorrow afternoon we will rent another car and head off to Michigan to visit our some friends and our Alma Mater for a few days, then we'll hop on our bike again and continue our touring adventure!  We are getting a little antsy to get back on our wheels again.