RAGBRAI 2024 Day 6 preview: Riders gear up for lengthy ride from Ottumwa to Mount Pleasant

The longest ride of RAGBRAI week 2024 comes on Day 6, at almost 85 miles (100 if you take the optional Century Loop). But it doesn't have Day 3's brutal elevation gain, and it goes to some of the most interesting places in southern Iowa.

Here's what's ahead.

Friday's RAGBRAI route

Ottumwa to Mount Pleasant

What to know

It's another day with a lot of pass-through towns, so let's hit the highlights:

• Thursday brought the chance to stop at the Welcome Home Soldier memorial to U.S. veterans, both living and dead. As Friday's first pass-through town, Agency — so named because it was established as a U.S. government Indian agency in 1839, before Iowa was even a state — features its own distinctive monument: the elaborate grave of Chief Wapello of the Sac and Fox tribe. He helped lead his people out of Wisconsin and resettled them in Iowa. He was a proponent of peaceful co-existence with white settlers, but after his 1842 death, his people were among native Americans relocated to Kansas.
• Somehow, Eldon, until now, has never been a RAGBRAI town. It's baffling because the city is home to one of the most iconic of Iowa artifacts: the American Gothic House that was the backdrop for Iowa artist Grant Wood's world-renowned 1930 painting. The preserved home isn't on the route, but it's only a short detour on paved roads. The house, owned by the Iowa State Historical Society, will be firmly off limits to rowdy RAGBRAIers. But the city-owned American Gothic House Center, while also closed, will have a souvenir stand and costumed actors portraying the dour father and daughter in the painting. They'll pose with riders for a fee, with the house as a backdrop, just as in the painting. Look for lots of American Gothica among in-town vendors, too.
• Iowa wine? It's a thing. Unincorporated Selma is no bigger than half a minute — or maybe about 15 seconds, but the Crane Winery in a charming historical building puts the town on the map.
• Imagine this: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who taught the Beatles transcendental meditation and yoga, decides to take his movement worldwide. So he comes to the United States and establishes Maharishi International University in the cornfields of Fairfield, Iowa. We are not making this up. The university is in town, and just northwest is the self-incorporated Maharishi Vedic City, a suburban collection of Indian-styled homes on the prairie. Fairfield's RAGBRAI theme is "Woodstalk: peace, love, pedal." Look for unique offerings on the town square, like vegan and Ethiopian cuisine and a Dixie/South Asian restaurant that serves Southern-fried chicken, bánh mì, ramen and hushpuppies. There also will be an array of musical performers that includes a solar-powered funk, bossa nova and fusion jazz combo and an array of metalcore performers (it's a Fairfield thing, TM notwithstanding). As the town's RAGBAI Facebook page puts it, "Namaste, y'all."
• Fans of the late, great TV sitcom "Parks and Recreation" and the charismatic Li'l Sebastian won't want to miss the opportunity to pose with the Lake Darling Saddle Club's mini pony in Brighton.
• Between Brighton and Wayland, tough-enough riders with a hankering for commemorative patches can earn one by taking a 15-or-so-mile, looping detour to turn the day into a century ride.
• Popular Iowa country band The Boys will be performing originals like "Stripper Stole My Truck" in Wayland .
• Mount Pleasant is famous as the home of the annual Midwest Iowa Old Threshers Reunion, a gathering of fans of antique farm equipment, including the giant steam tractors that brought agricultural mechanization to Iowa's prairies and helped turn it into some of the most productive farmland on the planet. According to the city's RAGBRAI Facebook page , among vendors on the town's pleasant square will be one using the steam generated by one of those engines to cook corn on the cob, one trash can full at a time.

Weather

Sunny, with a high near 87. South southeast wind 6 to 9 mph.

Entertainment

The Spazmatics, a veteran '80s cover band, is the Mount Pleasant headliner, taking the stage at 8 p.m. That's a bit earlier than in some towns, but RAGBRAI riders tend to make an early break on Saturday, the final day of the ride.

Looking forward to

... A day with such a variety of adventures to cap off another classic RAGBRAI.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: RAGBRAI 2024 Day 6 preview: Riders gear up for lengthy ride from Ottumwa to Mount Pleasant