Aug 25, 2020 - Waukee IA

We picked up some goodies from Buzzard Billy’s in Des Moines and walked across the street to Craig’s house for dinner and after some gabbing and some time on his rooftop deck admiring the sunset view of the capitol to the east and downtown to the west, we headed home. Oh, and I have some info from a marginally reliable source, that if there is not a helicopter escorting a missile convoy, then there is no live warhead on board. If there is a helicopter overhead, the convoy is carrying a real end-of-the-world nuke which makes our recent...

Aug 21, 2020 - Its a tri state day: South Dakota, Minnesota, & Iowa

Its a refreshing 66 degrees this morning in Salem, SD. We got underway at 0815. We are starting to feel a little shell shocked from traveling. What day is it? What time zone are we in? What state are we in? Are we there yet? Poor Zoey is totally confused too, but she has the luxury of going back to sleep and trusting us to take care of the details. One night she fell out of bed! I think she thought she was at home & could jump off the bed to get a drink of water. Thankfully I woke up and she was ok. I gave her some water and she laid down...

Aug 19, 2020 - Maytag cheese and Birti’s pills

I saw the notice this morning that the pills had been delivered to Kieler post office. I decided to go ahead and drive so that I will be sure to have them. Leave the full five hour round trip without incident, and did get the pills. They were in a very tiny box and I think that may have contributed to some of the delivery issue. However priority mail is very questionable right now. I then went to the Maytag dairy to get blue cheese for which they are famous. Did see the place where the Maytag washing machine plant was located. Now part of...

Aug 19, 2020 - Waukee IA

The drive on Thursday was an uneventful 3 hours south on I-25 through mostly barren south central Wyoming and we pulled into the Cheyenne KOA just before 2:00 and were set up a short time later. After some re-heated leftovers for lunch and a quick shower, we were off to a doctor’s appointment for me and then a re-supply visit to Walmart. My parents are in town to attend the reunion so we had dinner with them at Chili’s and after some gabbing and discussion of our plans for the big weekend, we called it a night. We spent most of Friday...

Aug 18, 2020 - Pella

We drove to Pella and found that both Pella windows and Vermeer construction equipment have headquarters in this Iowa town. The town is very Dutch, we toured the windmill and also the historical Dutch village in town. There were many interesting shops, one bakery had a long line inside so we decided not to sample some of their famous items. The tulip festival is held here every year and there is a very nice place in town where the queen is crowned. We did hear the glockenspiel but missed it and could not see the next viewing as it was...

Aug 17, 2020 - Illinois to Iowa

On Saturday, 8/15, we were able to get together with our friends, Nancy and Tim Okal, who live in Chicago. For the past week, though they live in Chicago,, they have been without power for a week due to that storm I mentioned we experienced in Indiana. There was extensive destruction in Illinois but Iowa was particularly hard hit. More about that later. In any event, Nancy and Tim drove to Joliet where we're staying in the Hollywood Casino RV park, our Illinois standby park. We had a lovely, socially distanced visit. We first met each other...

Aug 17, 2020 - Freightliner

Today we had a 10 AM appointment at Freightliner. They did come out and wrote us up about 1030, took us into the shop about 1130. They put a new mechanic on us so that was not particularly helpful. He did allow us to stay in the eagle with Birti and Manny. Thankfully. Ray was able to talk with him as he tried to troubleshoot the system, he called Freightliner Technical service and they told him to call REV. He was in so long a Q at rev technical that he gave up, put Freon in the system, told us there wasn’t anything else he could do. We...

Aug 15, 2020 - John wayne

We took a scenic drive past cornfields to Winterset Iowa. There was some evidence of damage from the derecho but this area was not affected as greatly as Cedar Rapids. John Wayne was born in Winterset and was 13 pounds at birth in 1907. The home has been restored and we took at tour of it after going through the museum that tells of his many films as well as early life. He was by all accounts a very good man. Then we went to the park that has one of the covered bridges of Madison County made famous by the film. There was a map of the other...

Aug 14, 2020 - Desmoines West KOA

Truck Country had the part on time and was done with the Eagle around 11:15. I went to Sams, not expecting them to be done so soon, but got back by 11:30. Ray drove out and the power steering would not work, set back down in the parking lot and waited for Will to finish lunch to take another look. Now it’s working, may just have needed to be started up. As we drove west we started to see grain storage buildings crumpled and blown off their foundations, roofs gone, corn flattened, trees that had been already piled up for disposal. All from...

Apr 29, 2020 - Iowa - The Weather State

. Since 1996, Intellicast.com has provided expert weather information to weather savvy users . http://www.intellicast.com/Local/WxMap.aspx . In December, 2019, I spent two nights in the parking lot of the "Diamond Jo's Casino" in Iowa during a darn-near blizzard, unable to make it back to Minnesota on my way home from Florida. Now, for a second time, I've been stranded in Iowa for a day because of weather. Traveling for ten years, the score is Iowa 2, all other states 0. Leaving the RV park in Springerville, Arizona on Sunday April...

Dec 10, 2019 - Stranded in a Winter Storm

. Blowing winds (30 or 40 miles per hour) and freezing temperatures kept me in this Iowa casino parking lot, 5 miles from the Minnesota border, for two nights. There was no way I could have driven the remaining 160 miles home until conditions improved. . The above paragraph pretty-much tells the story about why I had to stay in the casino parking lot, 5 miles from Minnesota, waiting for darn-near blizzard conditions to go away, so I could continue driving to the safe haven of our Minnesota cabin. Fortunately, I had plenty of fuel onboard...

Oct 30, 2019 - We are in Iowa!

Well we left on Monday morning and drove to Ogema where we had breakfast with Don's mom. We were heading towards the border by about 10:30. Everything was going good until we entered South Dakota. It was about 9:30 at night we were driving through a construction area when a really big raccoon came running out in front of us. Needless to say the raccoon probably died and the van came out somewhat damaged. We couldn't stop there so by the time we found a safe place to pull over the van was overheating and we were done. A call to CAA which...