We’re heading to our 50th STATE! 🇺🇸🙌🏼 (Traveling from Canada to IOWA for RAGBRAI)

Today we are traveling to our 50th state, Iowa. So you may have some questions, like why are you going to Iowa right now? Why are you flying and not driving? And what about Canada? Well, long story short, one of our big goals for 2023 was to visit our final seven states. We just finished the other six over the last couple months, and all we had left was Iowa. And a couple years ago, we learned of an annual event called RAGBRAI, where you bike across the entire state of Iowa. It instantly became a goal of ours, and we couldn't think of a cooler way to check off our 50th state than to bike across it, so we knew we had to do it this year. But we did have one problem. We are currently in Atlantic, Canada, and plan to be for three and a half more months, and the event is over 2,000 miles away in Iowa. Driving was going to take at least two days each way, and since we had to board Kona anyways, we decided to fly instead of drive, just to save ourselves some time and make things easier. But even with flying, it's still going to be a multi-day journey to get to the start of RAGBRAI. And first, we have a little over a two-hour flight from the Charlottetown Airport on Prince Edward Island to Toronto. I always love when we get to walk onto the airplane. It makes me feel like I'm going on a private jet. We have the Middle Sea, woo-hoo! Welcome to Toronto, the local time is 6.41. We're ultimately flying to Chicago today to get to Iowa, but there weren't any direct flights, so we have a five and a half hour layover, which has recently been made even longer due to a delay in our second flight here in Toronto. So we're gonna try to find a lounge, get some free food and drinks, and get some work done for a bit. The lounge was amazing. We got to have breakfast and lunch. We saved so much money. And now we have just under a two-hour flight to Chicago. Welcome to Chicago. So we checked a big duffel bag with all of our gear for RAGBRAI. We saw them put it on the plane, and we also put an air tag in it. That way we could track it just in case it got lost. We can see where it is. And let's see, did it make it? It's here! Huzzah, it made it! Check out our sweet ride. We got a Toyota Tacoma. We requested an SUV, but they gave us a truck, which might even be better because the bikes might fit in the back better. I'm so bummed about this. This is so cool. Get to drive a truck. It's got a Wyoming place. Oh, yeah. We're naming it Taco. As you've probably gathered, we are driving the rest of the way to Iowa, but we're not actually heading to Iowa today. We're actually gonna go a little bit in the wrong direction to Northwest Indiana. I have a bunch of family there, and our plan for the rest of the day is to go see my grandma, go pick up some last-minute items and cash for Ragpry, and stay at my aunt's house. And tomorrow morning we'll be getting up very bright and early to make the final trek to Iowa. Today we have eight and a half hours of driving to Sioux City, Iowa, which is where Ragpry begins. It is gonna be another long day of travel, and it is safe to say this is the first of many copies today, but this morning, A plus K runs on donkeys. We're seeing our first signs for Iowa! We have gotten maybe eight solid hours of sleep combined over the last two nights, but the stoke level is too high to be tired, and we're about two hours into the drive, and we have just been rocking out the entire time. We've had the most random assortment of music. We've had Miley, we've had Yellow Car, we've had Lady A, we have Ludacris, we have, who else do we have? We just stopped to make a pit stop, and I just put some really random stuff on there. You name it, we're listening to it. Not to mention, we have a gorgeous sunrise this morning, and so far, there's been no traffic. After we put the camera down yesterday, we had basically a parking lot experience, two hours worth of it, trying to get to northwest Indiana, so this has been a much more pleasant drive. We are about to cross the Mississippi River into Iowa! State number 50! Heck yeah, 5-0, 5-0, 5-0, 5-0! Woo! I cannot believe it. We are in our 50th state, our final state in the United States. We've been to every single state in the U.S. It is such a cool feeling to know that I've been to all 50 states. That is something I never thought I would do. We still have a lot more to see of Iowa before we officially count it, but we think we know the perfect place to celebrate such a large occasion. You can't drive I-80 and not stop at Iowa 80, the world's largest truck stop. This place is wild. It opened in 1964, and it has been open 24-7 ever since. It has never closed. And it has 900 truck parking spots, a movie theater, a barber shop, a chiropractor, a dentist, a free trucking museum, eight restaurants, a dog wash, workout room, tons of truck parts to buy, and so much more. It is basically Disneyland for truckers, and it is so much larger inside than it looks on the outside. There is just tons of stuff in here. I wish they made this shirt in adult size. I think it's pretty cool. Woof, woof. For you, sir. For me? Thank you so much. Congratulations. Glad you're my world's best wife. You are. They've served 35 million gallons of coffee since they opened. I guess we better help add to that number. And we also got some snacks to try to avoid making a bunch of stops for food today. It's okay. We popped into the trucking museum, and there are so many unique vehicles in here. Look at this guy. That's so cool. After seeing all of them, I think this one is my favorite. It's a 1926 auto car. I just really like the front cab. It looks like a funicular or a trolley car. And it has a dump truck on the back. I keep thinking that's our van in the parking lot, and I keep trying to go walk up to that van. We have a lot of driving left to do today, so we're back on the road. And next up, we have a 45-minute drive to Iowa City to pick up our rental bikes from World of Bikes. We chose to rent from them because they're located close to the end city of Ragpride, so it'll be easier to return it to them at the end because we are finishing this thing, and we are dipping that bike in the Mississippi. All right, this is our trusty steed for the week. Love it. It feels so good. So, ready? We'll see if he says it feels so good at the end of tomorrow. And they're in. And now for our final step, the four-and-a-half-hour drive all the way across Iowa to Sioux City, which is the starting point of Ragpride. Our first impressions of Iowa now that we're a few hours in is that it is beautiful. It's very green. The towns look really nice, like Iowa City where we just picked up our bikes. We wish we could've hung out there a little longer. And surprisingly, there are a good amount of rolling hills. I think most people think Iowa is really flat, but the Ragpride route says otherwise. We are gonna be climbing some hills this week. We're also starting to see lots of corn, which is something else we'll be experiencing a lot of in the next week. All right, first cornfield pea break. So, Ragpride starts and ends on completely opposite ends of the state, so you might be wondering how people get from one end to the other, and there are a few main ways. Some people will travel in a group and leave a car on both ends. Others will have a support crew that follows them the whole way. And then some people will park a car on one end and then utilize one of the charter services to get to the other end. And for us, since we flew in and we also did not have bikes, it was just easier and cheaper to rent a car. What was nice about our car rental, though, is that we did a one-way rental, so we were able to pick it up in Chicago and then we can drop it off in Sioux City. After two flights, eight and a half hours of driving, and a detour to Indiana, we have finally made it to the start of Ragpride. And holy cow, we are both so exhausted. It has been a very long couple days. And as you can probably tell, the logistics of coming to Ragpride were pretty complex for us, but we are so happy that we were able to make it work. Well, we've now gotta go take our rental car back and then meet up with the rest of our team, who are two familiar faces. Ah! And then do some last-minute prep before the Ragpride madness begins. Ever since Adam got his dunk in this morning, he's just talking in a thick Jersey-Boston hybrid accent. I'm talking trash about donkeys, too. We got Timmy's the other day up in the Canadas, and it was only four-something Canadian, and I get a medium coffee of donkeys? Six bucks! American! Come on, you jabronies.