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Published: July 22nd 2018
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It was a beautiful morning as we pulled out at 10:00 heading south on I-35. We could just have dropped on down I-35 S to your house Laura...except you aren’t home!!
We came the last few days from areas that were indeed “the land of 10,000 lakes” to vast fields of very flat land which then morphed into gently rolling hills full of prosperous looking farms. Our first stop was at the Iowa Welcome Center, and what a welcome stop it was! You can tell by the pictures that it is indeed unusual and the folks that worked there were tops. As you can also see from the pictures John found his new favorite friend who sold him a piece of Rhubarb Pie. Barb, you better quickly make sure you are still at the top of his rhubarb pie list!! Just Saying... It was delicious (he let me have three bites...small bites... (It takes VERY little to entertain us as you can readily see!)
The highways we were on today were 95% excellent. In fact, we have been more than pleasantly surprised at the good quality of most of the roads we have traversed.
Just in case you
were unaware of it, there is LOTS of corn in Iowa...not counting what is in Minnesota and the Dakotas. That said, to drive by it feels as if we are driving through a private farm, and it is beautiful to us. It may be because of the variety of the lay of the land. Some is flat, some is rolling, and they even mow the grass next to these huge, huge fields. Of course there is more than corn planted, and everything is done so neatly.
We arrived in our camp for tonight, Lazy Acres Campground near Urbana, Iowa at 4:30. Actually, we bypassed it at first as we were heading towards Iowa City. Catching a glimpse of it as we drove eastward we decided it looked pretty nice so we went up one exit to make the turn and came back to it. Before we made the turn, John called to make sure that there was room (see, we DO learn lessons!) and were told that they had one left. As we pulled up to the office, a very nice lady was outside waving us in! She (Donna) is one of the owners and wanted to make sure
we felt welcome, which we certainly did. After talking to her for a few minutes we asked about what looked to be a completely new section of the park. Donna said it wasn’t open yet but that if we wanted to be the first there, she would be excited to let us have one of the sites. We thought that sounded like fun, so a few minutes later we were situated on Site 86 as the first on that lot and the first in that section! We have a view from the front of a line of trees with fields in the back of them. After the last couple of campgrounds, it was good to get into a nice big site. The only issue is that their WiFi has not been extended out here so I will have to catch a Mcdonalds or some such tomorrow to get this one out. Since it really hasn’t been that exciting a day, I expect all will survive!
We drove 240 miles today.
PS—We passed several wind mill farms today, many of which had anywhere from 25 to 50+ windmills. I looked up some information on the cost of them and
was stunned at what I found out. Below is copied from the internet:
“The cost of a utility scale wind turbine range from about $1.3 million to $2.2 million per MW of nameplate capacity installed. Most of the commercial-scale turbines installed today are 2 MW in size and cost roughly $3-$4 million installed.”
I know most of you have seen their parts being trucked along the highways so you have an idea of how huge they are once they are put together. Amazing!
PS: we stopped at an Iowa Rest Stop to get this out. All of their rest stops seem to have really good WiFi. Thanks Iowa!!
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Lora Carbary
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Love the farms and pictures.
Well that Welcome Center is so cute loved that it looked like a barn and silo. Also loved the watering can picture. Why am I not surprised that you 2 are the first in the new section. Tell John I might try to grow Rhubarb in my garden. Melinda Hensley grows it and said her pie is the best. She promised me a piece. I don’t know how to make pie crust but I could make rhubarb cobbler for sure now you have gotten me a taste for it. Talked to Judy at church Jacob is back and wonderful sermon. Safe travels south.