July 30, 2010 - Day 6 of the ride

As I was saying, the rain stopped around noon, I changed into bike clothes and we headed to Quaqueston to join the ride. About a mile out from there, we saw a sign for Cedar Rock, a Frank Lloyd Wright house, so we turned in. This is one of only 19 FLW signature homes, so we decided to go on a tour. This home was built for Lowell and Agnes Walter as a summer vacation home along on the Waspipinicon River. Lowell was a local boy who made his name in the paving business. He patented a certain type of asphalt paving that is popular in Iowa and Illinois and made his fortune. I have attached some pictures from our tour of the grounds. It was fascinating to see FLW's use of space and how every part of the house was for living and not for show. He also designed and made all of the furniture for the house. Lowell Walter also made boats and had an amazing boathouse on the grounds. The Walters never had children and when he died, he donated his home to the state of Iowa along with a trust to maintain it.

After we finished our tour, we were only 2 miles from Quaqueston and the sun was out and so we hopped on our bikes and headed on to Manchester. We stopped in the small town of Winthrop for lunch and hung out at the party for a while. We then headed into Manchester where we again had a wonderful host family. They had a beautiful home on the golf course right outside of town and it was delightful to visit with them. They are big Green Bay Packers fan and our sleeping accomodations were in the shrine.

Spencer and Ethan joined us up in Manchester for the evening and then they headed on to Dubuque for the finish. We had dinner at the Catholic church as the home made meals always seem to taste the best. It is amazing how much more energy I had after only biking 25 miles today and how much less the legs hurt. It was the break that my body needed. Again we had another day of beautiful weather with highs only in the low 80's after the rain ended.

Now for those of you who think I was a wimp for skipping the first 37 miles today, we did put in 10 extra miles yesterday and 5 extra miles in Storm Lake. So out of the 395 scheduled miles, we have done 375 miles. That is within 10% so seems close enough for me.

So tomorrow it is on to Dubuque after a stop in Dyersville...