Despite a pretty loud and busy highway I slept great next to the river at Ta Ha Zouka park. I broke camp and rode east on a bike path beside the river for a few miles then jumped on some back roads that led me to a gravel farm track up the first hill in a long time. By this point I was quite warm and the hill plus the sun made me stop to take off my knee and ear warmers. I had propped my bike along a fence where there were hundreds of cows in a little field. A farm worker rolled up on a farm golf cart, and asked if I was having troubles. I explained that I was just removing extra clothes. He asked about my trip and then gave me advice about the road ahead. Said the gravel ran out at the top of the hill. I thanked him and continued up the steep hill. Sure enough it actually had a sign at the top that said the gravel ends, and after all the recent rain I knew it would be a mudfest till it's had time to dry out. I had a great view all around me after the hill climb. It felt great to climb a steep hill again. 11%, sustained. I turned north back to highway 275 and the hills continued, rolling constantly. I saw gravel kept going north of the highway so I kept going. I turned right on the parallel east west road and kept climbing. I was having a blast. I had forgotten how much I love to climb. But soon the gravel ran out at the next intersection and so I just jumped on the highway again. It still had a really wide shoulder and people in Nebraska are extremely courteous so this was pretty nice riding. I turned off to go through Pilger, a small town that only had one store. I talked to a nice local who had ridden across Nebraska in the nineties. I left town after a couple snacks and a Dr Pepper on the old highway, now gravel. It turned out a bigger town was only a few miles away. I had forgotten to grab a meal for supper so I got one at the DG there, and rode through some extremely steep side streets and left town on gravel, R road. It was very steep, undulating with the terrain, because like all the roads here, it must maintain a straight course regardless of what hills are in the way. I followed that and came across a couple minimum maintenance roads that were soft but passable, and each time gravel emerged at the next intersection. But one of these dirt roads started out good and got really muddy in the middle and continued on to the end at the next intersection with a highway. I had to walk around all the mud on the grass. In the process I picked up something in my front tire and it went flat right away. I threw another good tube in and continued east on the same road, now gravel, after picking out most of the mud from my bike and my shoes. The road I was on ran out and after consulting the map I decided it would be a lot simpler if I just followed the highway the few miles left to Decatur. Thankfully traffic was light and people were very nice because I had no shoulder and it was really hilly. I began to wonder if I were indeed heading in the direction of a river, because it seemed like as soon as I descended a bit I would go right back up, sometimes higher. But eventually I rolled down a nice hill to the little town of Decatur, and stopped at the only store, a little gas station. There was a woman sitting outside on a bench who asked me about my trip, and we got to chatting for awhile, and she took me inside and offered to make me a sandwich. She worked there at the little lunch counter in the store, and made me exactly what I wanted, Subway style but much better, while we talked about this and that. She encouraged me to grab chips and a drink and I ate my sandwich while we talked more about my trip and she told me about how she ended up in Nebraska from Queens, NY and Sarasota, FL. She paid for everything and I thanked her profusely and she wished me good luck in my travels. Thanks to Debra from Decatur, another good example making Nebraska probably the nicest and most generous state overall of my trip. I rolled away from the store almost right onto the bridge over the Missouri river. It was super sketchy as the surface of the bridge was an open grid of steel that barely looked capable of holding anything up at all. Thank goodness there was almost no traffic at all and it was pretty short. The Strava segment for the bridge is called "don't look down" which I think is appropriate. I rolled into Iowa and got a good pic of me in front of the sign and continued on to Lewis and Clark State Park. It's on an old former course of the river that Lewis and Clark camped at on both outbound and return journeys. It's cut off from the main river and just looks like a standalone lake all by itself now, since the river has been channeled, deepened, and shortened by the Army Corps over the years. It's a lovely little park, almost perfect if it weren't for the slight drone from nearby Interstate 29.