The second ride day was a 79 mile ride to Algona. With only 1,083 feet of climb, this was a pretty flat ride. The ducks were all gathered together out on the lake to shield themselves against the cool morning. The sunny weather made for great riding. Rachel loved the wildflowers, often stopping to take pictures. Everything was real green with mostly large fields of corn along with interspersed soybean fields. The corn stood about 9 foot tall.
Throughout each day's ride, local farmers set up small stands to sell us drinks and food. Additionally, vendors would rent a farmer's land to set up larger booths, selling everything from pankcakes to ice cream. On this day we stopped at a farmers stand where they sold us a 32 oz. Powerade for $2 and gave us a free icee pop to boot.
The roads along the varied in quality. Nothing really very bad but you had to keep a look out for cracks and bumps. And when you approached a stop sign, invariably there were "rumble strips" and people would holler "rumble!" You really wanted to missed the 3 sets of rumble strips on either side of the stop sign road to save your tires. 
Also along the route the "pass through" towns went all out to greet the RAGBRAI rides and sell them something. One of our favorite pass through towns was Pocahontas where we stopped for pie at Hope United Methodist Church. For $5, you got pie ala mode, a drink, and a bracelet that said "Praying for your ride." That was quite touching and we wore those the rest of the way.
Some towns we went through without stopping but that was rare. We would fill up our water bottles, grab a snack, or listen to a local band that was playing.
Total mileage on this day was 84 miles, my longest ride ever. Our campsite was on a grassy field next to a cornfield. We showered then shuttled to Algona downtown (theme: "That 70s Town: We're Cycle-delic") where I ate beef and noodles at the Knights of Columbus and Rachel had a rice and chicken bowl from a vendor. We listened to a little music by the Vic Ferrari Band and then returned to camp.
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