RAGBRAI 2024 Day 2, from Red Oak to Atlantic

Posted on by Vaseline

Depending on the weather and wind, this could be the easiest day of the week for RAGBRAI 2024, giving competitors plenty of time after arriving in Atlantic to prepare for the much longer and steeper ride on Tuesday.

This is what we’re going to do.

Monday’s RAGBRAI route

From red oak to Atlantic Ocean.

What to know

This could be the most rural day in Iowa on the southern RAGBRAI 2024 route. None of the three towns where riders are invited to stop along the route between Red Oak and Atlantic have populations of even 1,000, and two of the three, Lewis and Elliott, are perhaps a third that size.

But with just 40 miles to cover, riders will have plenty of time to stop and enjoy along the way. A few highlights: If you’re old enough to remember, you might catch yourself humming “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” as you pass through Lewis, the childhood home of Hall of Fame blues rocker Elvin Bishop.

For fans of the National Lampoon “Vacation” movies, meeting town Griswold is planning a crazy Clark Griswold theme. If it’s a warm day — it’s a rare late July day that isn’t in Iowa — Cold Spring County Park just south of Lewis on the RAGBRAI trail offers a lake and sandy beach. Lewis itself is cool in a different way, as the birthplace of Kool-Aid inventor Edwin Perkins.

And for those who can ride the gravel roads, there’s the option of taking a detour just outside Lewis to visit the beautifully preserved Hitchcock House. This house was an 1850s stop on the Underground Railroad, a smuggling route to freedom for slaves escaping from not-too-distant Missouri.

But don’t linger too long. You’ll want to enjoy Atlantic, the overnight town, a substantial (by Iowa standards) town of 6,500 with a tree-lined main street, Chestnut Street, filled with shops and eateries. It’s home to a Coca-Cola bottling plant that serves a significant portion of the Midwest.

Weather

There is a 30% chance of showers and thunderstorms on Monday, mainly after 1 p.m. The National Weather Service is predicting mostly sunny skies with a high near 79 degrees. A calm northeast wind around 6 mph will blow in the afternoon. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.

On Monday evening, the National Weather Service predicts partly cloudy skies with a low of around 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Entertainment

Atlantic’s Atlantipalooza is a spectacle headlined by RAGBRAI favorite, the Pork Tornadoes, who take the stage at 9 p.m. And if Top 40 isn’t your thing, come early to hear a well-curated lineup of Americana and country artists performing throughout the day.

Looking forward to

…A good night’s sleep before we start on Tuesday, which will probably be the toughest day of the ride.

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