Sunday, August 20, 2017

wet start

I think it rained most of the night and a few things dropped onto the roof with loud bangs so may have been a few hail stones.  I'll have to climb up and look at the roof before we go out again.  Looking at the weather map for the area online this morning showed the storm system hanging around until about noon time.  After we had breakfast it lightened up so we buckled up and got out of there without the need for the rain-suit.

After one stop in Kirksville, MO for fuel we made it home a little past noon.  The fuel gauge was showing low as we crossed the state line and so I planned to find a station in this area.  What I didn't remember was that MoDOT had built a new, very nice, four lane divided bypass around the town and there weren't any fuel station along the way.  After we made it to the last exit without a station we then turned back in toward town to get the necessary fluid.

This outing was short, only a week, but we enjoyed the complete change of pace and some real quiet time.

Our next scheduled outing begins Sept. 6 for a long journey up to the Acadia National Park in Maine.  Stay tuned!

Saturday, August 19, 2017

Beautiful Day

It's a very beautiful day here in southern Iowa on the banks of Lake Rathbun, yes that is spelled correctly.

We got out this morning for a little walk down to the shoreline.  Where our campsite is located used to be a road before the lake was built and then abandoned when the lake filled up.  The old roadway makes a nice path to a sandy beach where folks can swim and a few kids from another campsite made that walk this morning early, barefoot.  Here are a few pictures taken on that morning walk.

looking toward the lake
then  back toward our campsite
The COE when building this campground placed enough fill material at our site to make it level enough that we didn't need to remove the camper from the truck.
the swimming hole at the end of the trail
 along the way a couple of flower shots
 

Friday, August 18, 2017

Relocated

This afternoon we moved to a different lake area, still in Iowa.  Our new site is on the banks of Lake Rathbun which is near the center of the state just above the Missouri state line.  Our site doesn't have a view of the lake but we are however fairly secluded from the rest of the campground.





The site is level enough that we didn't have to unload the camper to get a level floor inside.  Only being here for two nights we probably will not need to leave the area anyway.

Today's drive brought back memories  18 years ago with our first big RV, a 37' 5th wheel trailer, our first time pulling and camping with that unit was to a campground near Des Moines, IA for a square dance.  Our good friends Larche and Marianne stayed with us in the trailer and after the dance we did the tourist things.  We visited the "covered bridges of Madison County", we visited John Wayne's birth place home, and we visited the Amana Colonies.  That was in July of 1999 just before my retirement in October of the same year.  Now we are back in the same general area with a much different camper.

This campsite doesn't have any over-the-air television but we do have both cell phone signal and wifi signal, yea!  With a good wifi signal we can watch any of our home satellite programming with this computer.

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Quiet time

For the days we have been here we have been the only campers in our loop of this campground.

The only other folks have been our almost daily visiting gobblers, it's been fun to see them passing through.

About 15 minutes after I took the above picture there was a large motorhome pulled into one of the nearby spaces with a yapping puppy.  The quiet has been nice while it lasted.  Most of these sites have been reserved (according to the markings on the site-posts) for tomorrow night as this weekend the campground will be mostly full.

This tree in out backyard is the largest Silver Maple that I have seen.  I remember we had one in our front yard when I was growing up in Springfield, MO on Battlefield Rd but it was only a large shrub.  The problem with silver maple trees is that they are aggressive/invasive and multiply with sprouts all around them.  This one has such saplings all around it that have been mostly controlled by mowing.


Tomorrow after lunch we hitch back up  and move to another lake in southern Iowa.

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

nice day

We got out this morning to a Wally world for a few groceries to restock.  With our limited pantry and cabinet space we can't stock up for more than a few days.  It was good to have a brief change of pace.

I did walk through a hole in the brush around our campsite later this afternoon to get a closer look at the lake.  Some other campers in the past had chopped this path but still it isn't a good access to the lake bank as can be seen in this pic.


A part of my leisure time is using my iPad both as an e-book and to play a game or two of sudoku.  Yesterday afternoon I laid it down for a bit while I was walking around and when I picked it back up this is the way it had changed its shape.  Don't understand why or how but at least it still works.


Monday, August 14, 2017

A quiet day

After morning rain showers it has been a quiet day at Lake Coralville.  We did have some visitors this morning taking a walk through our yard in the rain.  We had seen three earlier but I only got pictures of these two.



This afternoon we just sat out in the shade enjoying the fresh air.  The campground, after the weekend visitors have left, is mostly empty but there is a lot of lake boat traffic, mostly water skiing and tubing.

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Iowa

We are now sitting in our campsite on Coralville Lake near New Liberty, Iowa.  As noted in our previous posting we have sold our sister's house and the closing was last Thursday so we have made this outing to just sit and relax for a few days.

Another story has developed over the past few weeks beside the house sale.  We have a nice covered deck on the back of our house that JoAnn has decorated like an outdoor sitting room where we have a metal squirrel proof feeder that we load with black oil sunflower seeds.  Jo also has a couple of bird seed suit blocks out for our visiting feathered friends.  We have been blessed to have a pair of Pileated woodpeckers visit quit often.  They are the largest woodpeckers in North America.  Then we noticed that we have had some unwanted night time visitors that cause messes on our deck.  I have a live trap that I set and baited it with some of the sunflower seeds.  Over the past two weeks I have caught and relocated 5 raccoons.  The first one I believe was the mother because the next morning when I checked the trap she was in it with 2 or 3 young ones scampering around not knowing what to do next.  Up to now I believe that all three have been relocated along with another large adult.  Hopefully we now have relocated the whole family.  I take them about 17 miles from our house across both the Missouri River and the Moreau River.

Today we headed northerly to the banks of this lake near Iowa City, Iowa.  We have no plans to do much except loaf and relax but who knows. Here are a couple of pics of our campsite.