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rate the overall experience with our charter excellent or good
To make your RAGBRAI experience much more enjoyable!
The trip across the state is on air-conditioned charter buses and your bikes are transported by a professional bike packing company with over 25 years of experience. Bikes do not require any disassembly and are protected with heavy packing blankets.
We have a registration table for easy check in. Each bus has a bus host who plays movies and assists with any questions you may have.
For those of you that stay with us for camping we go out to all the overnight towns ahead of time to select preferred campsites. In the majority of cases this is away from the main group of 2,000 riders but close enough if you want to spend some time in the main campground.
Once arriving at our campsite after biking you will have your luggage waiting for you along with canopies set up for you to relax in. This area will have numerous coolers stocked with a wide range of cold beverages. There will also be papers available that describe what is happening in town.
A generator will be set up for those of you that need to charge an electronic device and we will have a bulletin board with information and maps of the town that you are spending the night in.
We have a shower truck with us every night unless we are at a college or school with showers right next to us. Showers cost $6 and this cost is not included with camping fees.
We have 17 years of experience with running the charter and are available to assist you. We limit the number of campers we charter to keep the group size manageable.
Our goal is to help make the ride an enjoyable and memorable experience for you.
Option 1 $395: Charter transportation along with daily camping and baggage service. This provides bus and bike transportation from Clinton to Le Mars on July 24, 2021 and daily baggage service for the week. The bus ride will make a lunch stop on the way across the state. With the daily baggage service, we will provide the following items:
Option 2 $160: Transportation for you, your bags, and bike, from Clinton to Le Mars on July 24, 2021. The bus will make a lunch stop on the trip across the state.
Option 3 $240: Daily baggage service along with the camping for the week. No bus ride. The daily luggage service will include the items listed under Option 1.
Option 4 $35 per day: For those people that only need a few days of camping with our group. The daily luggage service will include the items listed under Option 1.
We have done both when we rode RAGBRAI and either one works it just depends on the amount of services that you want. We do believe for first time RAGBRAI riders it makes it easier for you if you do use a charter. There are people there to answer your questions and you are part of a smaller group which makes the ride less overwhelming.
RAGBRAI establishes a date when the charters are allowed to contact/visit the overnight towns. If a charter gets to a town and finds a spot they contact the campground chair of that town and let them know what they would like and then hope to get that spot. We visit each overnight town several times prior to the ride.
We limited our charter to 500 week long campers as that is the amount that fits into a one block square city park and over the years this has allowed us to get the sites we desire.
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When the ride visits smaller towns that have between 2,000 and 10,000 people there are not as many options available as you get bigger.
Of course, if we were smaller there would be other spots, we would fit into that we currently do not.
However, if we were to increase our size that would limit the number of places we could fit into as a group. So that is why we limit our campers.
By joining us you can make your trip easier. Just follow these steps:
You will park your car at the RAGBRAI designated parking area and then find Brancel Charters. We will notify you in our letter sent out in early July of our distinguishing features so you can easily find us. Clinton will have camping, food, showers and week-long parking. The parking will be available near the charter departure site.
You drop your bike off with us on Friday July 23, 2021 from 2:00 PM until 8:30 PM. Then Saturday morning you drop off your bags at one of our air-conditioned charter busses and get ready for a relaxing ride across Iowa. The busses will start to arrive at 7:15 am and will load them one by one and then leave as they are full. The last bus will leave by 8:15 AM. The ride will go by quick as you watch movies and talk with other passengers.
Once we arrive in Le Mars in mid afternoon we will unload your bikes and we will set up our camp site for the night. There will be an expo going on and the RAGBRAI opening ceremonies.
Yes! You can join us for camping during the week (Option 3.) There are other charters that can provide you a ride back to the start if needed. You can get a parking pass for the week by going to beginning town’s website, when it is available.
Each morning you will load your luggage on our truck to be transported to the next town. You can then take your time riding to the next city. When you arrive at the end city for the day we will have BBC signs up as you enter the city pointing you to the location of our camp site for the night.
Once you arrive at the camp site, we will have canopies set up for you along with cold drinks in a cooler. The drinks will be there for a small fee. We will have a shower truck, bike mechanic, massage therapists, portable bathrooms, hand washing stations and bike pumps.
We will have a separate camping area for our group.
RAGBRAI provides a list of activities going on in each city and eating places. We will pick you up a copy of that so you can plan your activities for the rest of the day.
You will locate Brancel Charters just like a normal day by following our signs and pick up your luggage to start a successful trip back home.
In July we will provide you with our camping locations and where to meet us. If necessary, contact Le Mars for week long parking information.
We use a professional moving company that has over 25 years’ experience in transporting bikes with excellent results. Each bike will be protected by a heavy packing blanket. We do not require you to disassemble your bike, if you would prefer to do so that is okay too.
Well you should definitely bring your bike! Bring along your normal biking gear and camping items. A few items you might forget but are nice to have are an extra tube and a patch kit, sunscreen, rain jacket, two bottle cages for your bike, a roll of toilet paper in a plastic bag and earplugs. You will also need cash to buy food and drinks. You can usually find an ATM machine in the overnight or pass thru towns.
We do not have a baggage limit as we would prefer you bring two small to medium sized duffel bags than one large, heavy bag (prefer under 50 pounds). If you are using the Register’s baggage truck (option 2 with us), you are allowed one bag to which you may strap your tent and it must be under 50 pounds.
We have a mid-week laundry service where you turn in some clothes on Tuesday night of the ride and we return them to you on Wednesday night. This helps if you need to have bike shorts or jerseys done during the middle of the week. The cost of this is $20 and includes a complimentary bag.
We offer a dinner at our campsite at least one night during the week. We pass on the cost of the dinner to those that want it as an additional service and as a way to create a camp community. You can purchase this the night of the dinner for $10.
We also offer morning coffee for $2 per day with refills. The morning coffee we get from HyVee Stores or a local coffee shop.
If you add up all of our optional services our cost is well below others that package these services. With us you get to tailor it to your needs and not pay for what you won’t use.
This is an optional service where we provide a towel and then wash and dry it for you each day. This option is $20 for the week. The towel service is limited to the first 300 people that pay for the service due to laundromat constraints. Most locations that we camp next to offer towels with the shower for a nominal fee.
The recumbent is more difficult to pack and takes up more room than a standard bike.
Yes. We have a generator available during the daylight hours to charge cell phones, and other small electronics.
At the overnight town we offer a dinner at our campsite at least one night. We are close to food on most occasions.
During the ride finding food on RAGBRAI is like finding a fly at a summer picnic. Many people refer to this ride as eating your way across Iowa.
The food offerings vary from fair type food to church / university dinners. If you have specific dietary restrictions such as gluten free or vegan then you may need to bring items to supplement what you will find on RAGBRAI.
For entertainment we have a band in our camp at least once during the week. Each town also has an entertainment committee that is bringing in a variety of bands especially in the evening. We don’t want to take away from the towns’ efforts in the evening to show off how well they did at providing you quality entertainment.
Through our years of biking we have done many organized bike rides including cross state rides, MS rides, and other long training rides that were supported. On several of these rides I did struggle to find food and entertainment. However, RAGBRAI is not like that. If we find locations that we are concerned about food we will work to provide it and entertainment has never been an issue.
We have a shower truck that will be at our campsite each night unless we are staying at a school or university that has ample shower resources.
Besides that, each overnight town sets up several locations that have showers. We post maps of each town on our bulletin board that show the locations of showers in that city.
The average cost of a shower on RAGBRAI is $6 and the cost is not included with your camping fee.
Each person that uses our charter needs to send in an application to RAGBRAI for their wristband.
In case someone does not get selected in the lottery we may be able to assist them in finding a wristband. We frequently have people that are signed up with us that need to cancel and we pair them up with someone that is looking for a wristband. The wristband transfer then takes place between the two parties, we are no longer involved.
You must still transfer the liability waiver with RAGBRAI.
We have tents available to rent for the week if you do not currently own one. Eureka Sunrise 8 is a 2 person tent ($100 for the week). This should be reserved in advance.
We offer limited sag service between overnight towns. RAGBRAI handles all sagging that occurs once you begin the ride for that day. We have limited spots since we are limited by how many vehicles we can take. We have been able to accomdate people either via our services, other sag services, or having our riders bike 5 – 10 mile and sag with RAGBRAI. We will make sure that someone with a medical condition will be able to sag. Other than medical conditions we will offer this on a first come first serve basis. Depending upon demand we may need to charge a maximum of $20 per day if we need to transfer to another sag service.
No. One of the purposes of a charter is to help limit the number of vehicles in the overnight towns. The towns allocate space for parking for each charter according to the number of vehicles we say we will bring. Remember, the towns have shuttles and many of them are small enough to walk to food and entertainment — or you can even bike!
The shipping service is Send My Bike.
Yes you get a discount of $5 per year that you have used our service. The discount is capped at $75 for option 1 and $25 for options 2 and 3.
Tipping is common in service and travel industries. Any tips we receive will be divided among our college bound teens. As in other situations tipping is not required or expected but if you wish to show your appreciation to our young crew we encourage you to do so.
We will provide a full refund to those passengers who are not selected in the RAGBRAI wristband lottery. We allow transfers if you find someone to take your place.
We will provide refund, less a $20 cancellation fee, through June 23.
From June 24 to July 14 we will provide a refund, less a $50 cancellation fee.
July 15 to July 21 we will provide a refund, less a $75 cancellation fee.
July 22 and after we have a no refund policy.
We have researched other charters refund policy and we are very liberal in regards to refunds.
rate the overall experience with our charter excellent or good
rate the value for services offered excellent or good
would recommend Brancel Bicycle Charters to others
17
years in the bicycle charter business
6,930
bicycles transported
125
combined years of RAGBRAI experience