RAGBRAI Day 2 preview: Riders make the trek from Red Oak to Atlantic

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

Here's what's ahead.

Monday’s RAGBRAI route

Red Oak to Atlantic.

What to know

This could well be the most rural of rural Iowa days on the southerly RAGBRAI 2024 route. None of the three towns where riders are invited to pause on the way between Red Oak and Atlantic has even 1,000 people, and two of the three, Lewis and Elliott, are maybe a third that size.

But with only about 40 miles to cover, riders will have plenty of time to stop and enjoy themselves along the way. A few highlights: If you're old enough to remember, you may find yourself humming "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" as you roll through Lewis, childhood home of Hall of Fame blues rocker Elvin Bishop.

For fans of the National Lampoon "Vacation" movies, meeting town Griswold is planning a zany Clark Griswold theme. If it's a hot day — it's a rare late July day that's not in Iowa — Cold Spring County Park just south of Lewis on the RAGBRAI route offers a lake and a sandy beach. Lewis itself is cool in a different way, as the birthplace of Kool-Aid inventor Edwin Perkins.

And for those equipped to ride gravel, there's a chance to take a detour just outside Lewis to visit the beautifully preserved Hitchcock House, an 1850s stop on the Underground Railroad that smuggled to freedom escaping slaves from not-too-distant Missouri.

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

Weather

Monday brings a 30% chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly after 1 p.m. The National Weather Service calls for mostly sunny skies with a high near 79. Calm winds blow from the northeast around 6 mph in the afternoon. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.

Monday night, the National Weather Service calls for partly cloudy skies with a low around 60.

Entertainment

Atlantic's Atlantipalooza has it goin' on with a RAGBRAI favorite, cover band the Pork Tornadoes, as its headliner, taking the stage at 9 p.m. And if Top 40 isn't your style, drop by earlier to listen to a well-chosen lineup heavy with Americana and country artists performing throughout the day.

Looking forward to

... Getting a good night's sleep before grinding out what will likely be the ride's toughest day on Tuesday.