Iowa, Monday, May 27, 2013

Memorial Day a day set aside for remembering those who gave their lives for our freedom.  It also is a day in many locations that family members decorate with flowers the graves of family members and refer to the day as Decoration Day.

A night of dry camping and, thankfully, we had no stormy weather during the night.  At 7:20am this morning we were leaving the parking lot and back to I-80 east.  The wind was really blowing making driving for Tom a little challenging.  Not long on the road until we encountered wet roads.  We crossed the Missouri River and entered Iowa.

From 2013-05-27

  Cloudy skies appeared threatening but we didn’t encounter any rain.  East of Des Moines we were seeing what appeared to be numerous lakes on both sides of the road which we soon realized were not lakes but fields completely flooded.

From 2013-05-27

From 2013-05-27

  Streams and rivers were bank high and some over the banks.  We stopped at a Flying J’s for fuel after Des Moines and then about 30 miles further we stopped in Newton, Iowa for the night (359 miles).  It was past 1:30pm and we had not had lunch.  We just couldn’t seem to see anyplace convenient for parking the motorhome. 

We had planned last night to stop in Newton at Rolling Acres RV Park, a Good Sam park, but when we arrived here the campground is now Newton KOA.  Don’t know what is up with campgrounds changing to KOA campgrounds but this has happened along this route at several campgrounds.  We sure are not happy seeing this as KOA’s(KEEP ON ADDING- our interpretation of the letters) are more expensive then most other campgrounds and the quality is in no way superior to other campgrounds.  If other campgrounds were available in the area we would have chosen to go elsewhere but, unfortunately, that was not the case in Laramie or here.

After setting up we did go out for lunch at Culver’s.  We were now in Culver country, a good hamburger and frozen custard restaurant.  We were somewhat disappointed in our Swiss-mushroom burgers as the cheese was not melted and the mushrooms were few but the custard was perfect.

Listening to the news, we have heard that 6 inches of rain has fallen in this area Saturday and Sunday and the possibility of more stormy weather tonight is predicted.  Tom has set up the weather radio to alert us of any threatening weather and we were told of a storm shelter to go to in the campground if necessary.  Sure hope we don’t have any bad storms to deal with.