Impromptu trip to Amana

At church on Sunday, fellow MORE members, Mark and Narcissa, asked us if we were up for a ride to the Amana Colonies in Iowa, for supper. Since the weather was beautiful, we jumped at the chance! MORE members Kim and Sue were also happy to accept the invitation!

We all met at Kim's house for our trek to the Colonies. Kim had a route all mapped out! We headed west on route 6 which took us through Iowa City, Iowa. We made a stop at Hawkeye Harley to browse around and stretch our legs. That's one of the few Harley dealerships that I've seen open on a Sunday. Cool!

Continuing north out of Iowa City, we ended up at the Amana Colonies in the 4:00 range. I hadn't been to Amana since I took a group of student there on a field trip 15 years ago. We had dinner at the Ox Yoke Inn. Wow, was it great! We had all the Roast Beef, Chicken, Ham, and side dishes that we could handle. The waitress kept bring food out as the dishes became empty. The meal was served family style. As our MORE group has become kind of a "family", it was certainly appropriate! Of course, I had a little room left for a piece of rhubarb pie!

Following the meal we all waddled out to our bikes. We thought that we might walk around the town a little bit, but most of the stores had closed up for the day. Bummer! We'll have to do some better planning in the future and leave time for some shopping. The area has a lot of little gift shops that looked interesting. Kim really wanted to visit the Amana furniture store, so he was disappointed to find it closed.

On the way back I had a little mechanical trouble on my bike. We got stuck in some stop and go traffic in Iowa City, so the engine got a little hot. That caused the main circuit breaker to trip and shut all of the electrical down on the bike. Fortunately, I was able to pull over to the side of the road and restart the bike. This happened a couple of times. Once we got on to the open road, the wind cooled the engine down and we made it the last 30 miles without incident. Obviously, I'll be taking the bike in to get it serviced.

Mechanical trouble aside, the afternoon was a blast! The ride was great. The fellowship was enjoyable. AND the food was amazing! In fact, the weekend was the best! Between the Saturday trip to Galena, and the Sunday trip to Amana, I couldn't have asked for any more!

Ride safe,
Mike