This post will cover the past two days as there wasn't much in the way of new information.  On Saturday evening the walk was a boat trip through the town of Giethoorn.  The canals are the streets with a speed limit of 12 K/H.  The houses are all very well maintained with lots of beautiful flowers.  For the locals, one will travel by boat or walk.  Each house has a steep bridge to walk over so as to enter their property.  In this area the past agriculture involved digging peat out of the ground to help fuel Amsterdam.  Later the areas filled with water.  The canals and lakes have the same depth, about three feet.
     Sundays ride made a loop through a different national park called "De Weerribben"  A real flat ride.  What with the dikes that have been built, part of this land we are in is below sea level.  We stopped for lunch at a park that told about the thatch harvest and the thatching of roofs along with the plant and animal life in the area.  This being Sunday and also still a part of the "Bible Belt," not many business were open.  We rode into a very strong headwind for the final two hours.  The city walk around Kampen included the fact that the town was started in 1600's  Off of one building, used to be the city building hung a full size model of a cow.  The story was to poke fun of the frugal nature of the townspeople.  The backside of the building had the bars from the original jail, along with the barred showing area.  Words on the mail slots were pointed out
 "nee"  and "ja" No or yes.  The first indicated you did not want junk mail, the second indicated yes you wanted the town fliers.  Most had nee   nee.  Somehow the postman had to know what he was delivering.
     Monday turned into a memorable day with rain falling  quite heavy in the afternoon.  The foul weather gear came in handy.  In the morning, we stopped at a small town named Elburg.  It is a new town, rebuilt in 1396.  Unusual for Holland is the fact that city streets and blocks are all square, like in the U.S.  After the coffee break, we rode into another portion of the huge park the Veluwe.  Came in from the other side and went to the Hidden Village.  An area with small "houses" in the ground that hid many Jews during WWII.  Then off to lunch at a pancake house.  Had one huge apple-raisin pancake.  The afternoon ride was shortened a bit because of the weather.