It's a process.

Many of the small towns we visited along the Katy trail and the trail system around Des Moines get a big economic boost from being next to a rail trail. You can see from the public artwork in Perry that they embrace cycling.

When we talk to people in these towns, we often hear that the locals were initially reluctant to put in cycling infrastructure, or to welcome cyclists into their towns. Thriving restaurants, B&B's, bike shops, etc. slowly change people's minds. It's a process.

In Iowa, I can understand how people would be reluctant to pay for paving a bike trail when the majority of the rural roads are unpaved. Today we were on a beautifully paved rail trail, passing gravel roads for cars every mile. I guess the population density is too low to justify the expense of paving every rural road. How do they decide which roads to pave? I suspect it helps to be a good friend if the county commissioner if you want your road to be paved.

None of the car roads we saw today were as nicely paved as the bike trail.

Adel has a beautiful courthouse, surrounded by bumpy brick streets. Brick making has long been the major industry in town.

Yesterday was a stormy day. The heavy rain and high winds brought down some trees along the trails, but there was already a guy with a chainsaw clearing the trails. There are severe thunderstorm warnings for tonight and a tornado warning for a couple of counties west of here, so the chainsaw guy may be busy again tomorrow.

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