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Iowa. Anyone Have Anything To Report On Iowa?


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4 hours ago, Dottles said:

Yeah, I get that.  It'd be a big mistake to equate Washington with rain, mountains or sound. We have a sage brush climate 2 hours from Seattle. In fact, lots of training there for the folks the sent off to Iraq. Most of our state consists of the Columbia plateau -- arid and ugly.

Says you.

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6 hours ago, Randomguy said:

I met a young lady in Iowa once, she made an impression on me.  She was nice and I liked her mannerisms.

I should have married her.

The gal I met just before she returned to Iowa was awesome. I just think about her fondly when I think of her.  I no longer know her name and totally lost track of her but she was A+.

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3 hours ago, sheep_herder said:

Says you.

Not the Palouse or the Columbia River and the canyons it's carved.  Nor the northern part of the state.  But the center and the south center are pretty bad. Anything between George, Washington and Lake Sprague is pretty yuk. Potholes and Moses Lake are OK.  But I'm not a prairie guy.  I like my beauty lush and green and loaded with plenty of water.

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18 minutes ago, Dottles said:

Not the Palouse or the Columbia River and the canyons it's carved.  Nor the northern part of the state.  But the center and the south center are pretty bad. Anything between George, Washington and Lake Sprague is pretty yuk. Potholes and Moses Lake are OK.  But I'm not a prairie guy.  I like my beauty lush and green and loaded with plenty of water.

I know, but you are talking to a 'prairie sort of guy'. Plus, it is more difficult to get lost on the prairie compared to the woods, that is unless it is foggy.  Then you have to walk until you find a fence to follow.

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6 minutes ago, sheep_herder said:

I know, but you are talking to a 'prairie sort of guy'. Plus, it is more difficult to get lost on the prairie compared to the woods, that is unless it is foggy.  Then you have to walk until you find a fence to follow.

I know. I like to travel to the desert now because it's different. There is beauty everywhere. Sometimes it takes awhile for the eye to see it. But it's there.

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30 minutes ago, Randomguy said:

Ah, I am jealous.  Why Sedona?

Well because if we want to vacate (no staycation) in March or April, then we need to go to the sun which is typically Hawaii or the Southwest from here. But Southwest is closer and there is still so much of it I have never seen. Last year or the year before we did Moab, UT and had a great time. We pretty much only do adventure or exercising vacations now. At this time of year, there are some great sceneries and mountain bike rides to see and do. My wife was never MTB rider until I convinced her and now she loves it. In fact last time she kicked my ass. Sedona was always on my bucket list and is considered one of the 7 most spiritual places on Earth (according to those that have visited every nook and cranny).

http://outertravelsinnerjourneys.com/the-seven-most-powerful-places-on-the-planet/

 

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13 minutes ago, Dottles said:

Well because if we want to vacate (no staycation) in March or April, then we need to go to the sun which is typically Hawaii or the Southwest from here. But Southwest is closer and there is still so much of it I have never seen. Last year or the year before we did Moab, UT and had a great time. We pretty much only to adventure or exercising vacations now. At this time of year, there are some great scenarios and mountain bike rides to do. My wife was a never MTB rider until I convinced her and now she loves it. In fact last time she kicked my ass. Sedona was always on my bucket list and is considered one of the 7 most spiritual places on Earth (according to those that have visited every nook and cranny).

http://outertravelsinnerjourneys.com/the-seven-most-powerful-places-on-the-planet/

 

I like Sedona, but the mountain biking was not for me.  Overly rocky and drop-offy, probably going to be a bit technical if you aren't expecting it.  It is nice to look at and fun if you haven't been before.  I would take the quick drive to Flagstaff for a day if you need to escape the hippie vibe.

DH would probably love the riding there, she sounds like an animal on the technical stuff.

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22 minutes ago, Dottles said:

@Randomguy

I see definitely 1 and maybe 2 or even 3 on this list.  But 16 miles on the first path a couple times a day is alright by me.

https://www.osprey.com/stories/5-best-mountain-bike-rides-for-beginners-in-sedona-with-over-the-edge/

Those all sound pretty good and fun, maybe do them one by one!

I nailed the biggest drop I had ever done in Sedona, btw.  A friend and I arrived in Sedona and stopped at a bike shop to check out suggestions for a ride  The owner said he had a customer that took people on rides for about $20/head, and we didn't really have enough time left in the day for a possible ride if we hemmed and hawed and wasted time, so we decided to do it.

That customer turned out to be a chick who was about 6' tall and maybe weighed 110lbs, so I figured her to get us on a power-to-weight climb heavy ride, but she didn't.  She took us on a twenty or so mile all-around ride.

Now I am not a good technical rider, I don't want to get hurt and usually the payback from the technical stuff isn't worth the risk to me.  That said, this tall and spindly chick with zero muscle was just all smooth, no muscle at all to muscle things with.  We rolled up to a drop that my buddy said was 4 feet and it looked it.  She had us stop before we got there so we could eyeball it.

While we were looking, she just rolled to the drop at a leisurely 6-8 mph and just sort of levitated over it.  I thought that if this chick with the strength of a 4 year old can do it, I should be able to, too.  I approached at the same speed, made up my mind not to muscle or tense anything, and totally nailed it in exactly the same way.  I was shocked, normally I wouldn't do a bigger drop (that is a massive drop for me).  Pretty cool.

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20 hours ago, Kzoo said:

Yup. I always found it's best to have one one your right side and one on your left side.  Bikes get tough to ride otherwise.

 

When you ride through nooks and crannies of shale rock in the desert, you better be in alignment or you're going to go flying onto jagged rock. Some of those technical sections require you to have the left pedal down and tilting the bike at a certain angle to make it through. But why am I telling this to a rodie guy in Michigan? Beyond your comprehension.

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