Iowa to South Dakota

35 degrees on Sept 1. Pretty amazing but it is like riding in a hair dryer, Erik says. Hard to keep hydrated. We went to 3 states today: Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. Checked out the main street of Walnut before we left. The sign says it is the Antique capital of USA and we wished we had more time to explore. Then off to Omaha, Nebraska to get a rear tire for the Triumph. We struck out at the Triumph dealers. They did not stock tires and it would take 4 business days to get one in. But BMW Omaha had one that worked and Jim Gaston and Carl were extremely accommodating getting us on the road back to Iowa and South Dakota. While we waited we got the scoop about all the events going on in Nebraska from a couple of ardent old BMW riders. Big poker rally at Soldier and that explained the steady stream of Harleys in that direction. Nebraska was the first state we rode in that has a helmet law. I still am finding it disconcerting to see bare skin and streaming hair. In Nebraska we saw a clutch of a dozen young wild turkeys but did not have the camera handy. Erik is still searching for the perfect ice cream cone and today in Onawa, Iowa he made his own but the store clerks said they were sorry but he failed the test and would not be hired. We did pass a town a town called La Mars that had a sign saying they were the world's ice cream capital. On another trivial note, each province or state seems to have its own variety of road kill. In Nebraska it is definitely the raccoon. New Brunswick, and Ontario the award went to the beaver. It was ducks in Maine and of course, moose in Newfoundland.