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By 7:30 a.m. on Monday, hundreds of cyclists were already zooming past cornfields on a fog-shrouded county road during the second day of the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, or RAGBRAI. Only for this leg of the event, the riders weren’t in Iowa — they were a mile-and-a-half north of the border in Jackson County, Minnesota.
The detour marked the first time in the event’s 52-year history that the route crossed into Iowa’s northern neighbor, and organizers were keen to showcase the North Star State.
At the entrance to Brown Park, the site of the day’s halfway rest stop, Jackson County Chief Deputy Sheriff Kelly Mitchell helped direct traffic at a T-intersection as a constant stream of riders entered and exited. Despite his best efforts, he acknowledged there had already been a few low-speed pileups.
In the park, hundreds of riders refueled on baked potatoes, mini donuts, coffee and beer from over two dozen vendors local to southern Minnesota. People waited in line to pose with the “Welcome to Minnesota” sign, which had been relocated to the park from the side of State Highway 86, and to collect a commemorative wooden coin to mark RAGBRAI’s first visit to the state.
The jaunt into Minnesota was a huge point of pride for Kathi Hall, Jess Coggins, Ruth Glaser and Melissa Reeder. The four women, who rode with the Great Scott Cycling Club based in Prior Lake, wore matching Minnesota state flags in their hair.
“It’s bragging rights because you do have that little bit of, you know, Iowa–Minnesota [rivalry],” said Glaser. “It’s fun for all the Iowans to be up here and see what we have.”
The ride, billed by organizers as the largest cycling tour in the world, began in 1973 when two Des Moines Register writers pitched the idea of bicycling across the state and sharing the experience through a series of articles.
Nowadays, tens of thousands of riders register annually for RAGBRAI. The west-to-east route, ridden over the course of a week, regularly stretches over 400 miles and varies from year to year, with different communities across Iowa, and now Minnesota, hosting overnight stops or daily aid stations like the one in Brown Park.
The massive bike tour evokes less of a Tour de France vibe and more of a State-Fair-on-wheels atmosphere — You might find as many riders clad in silly costumes as you will in spandex, and for some, the number of pie slices consumed during the day the most important metric.
For 7-year-old Ravenna Suginaka, whose family is from Eau Claire, Wis., her favorite part of the ride so far was snacking. She, along with her 9-year-old sister Amaya, parents Caitlin and Alex, and grandfather Bob Molsberry, who was pedaling his 31st RAGBRAI using a handcycle, posed for a photo with the “Welcome to Minnesota” sign wearing scarves and stocking hats.
We brought all of our cold weather gear, just in case things got hairy out here,” said Caitlin Suginaka with a laugh. “Some blizzards in the state of Minnesota get real bad, I hear.”
“It feels pretty special for us to be riding part of the route in Minnesota today,” she continued. “My husband and I are St. Olaf grads, so being back in the state is exciting.”
Other RAGBRAI riders MPR News spoke with praised the inclusion of Minnesota on this year’s route — citing the state’s rich bicycle tourism infrastructure, like the Mesabi and Grand Rounds bike trails, and the legacy of late Star Tribune Journalist Jim Klobuchar, who spearheaded a Minnesotan version of RAGBRAI called “Jaunts with Jim,” as reasons to support the visit.
Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota Executive Director Michael Wojcik said he first heard from RAGBRAI organizers six months ago, asking if they’d like to help organize a Minnesota stop.
“We sure would!” he replied.
To honor the northernmost point RAGBRAI had ever visited, the Alliance helped host a photo-op on the shore of Pearl Lake at the Brown Park rest stop.
“One of the things about RAGBRAI is you start out by dipping a tire in the Missouri River and at the end you dip a tire in the Mississippi River,” Wojcik explained. "Since they're coming into Minnesota, they get to dip their tire a third time.”
On Saturday, the cyclists will reach the end of the route after riding 406 miles, 15 of which will have been pedaled in Minnesota. After touching the waters on the route's western and northern edges, riders will finally dip their wheels into the Mississippi River at Guttenberg, Iowa, to mark the end of this year’s RAGBRAI.
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