Travel To Clear Lake, IA

Thursday the 18th

After last night's exciting display of midwest weather, it was a very nice morning.... but very muggy. We got up around 7:00 AM to the "Punky Alarm". After a quick morning routine I looked for the dogs to take them outside for a walk. Turns out that they were both still on the bed. In fact, Punky was snuggled up to my pillow, curled up like a pill, cutting Zzzzzz's.

"Well", as Jack Benny would say... or "Humpfff", as Commander Scorpion of the Galactic Patrol would say, or, well you get the picture. So I gently picked up Punky and set her on the floor. Then I gently picked up Wicket and put her on the floor and quickly snapped their leashes on - heheheh, no dummy me. We mad it outside and took our walk while Tina tidied up and made breakfast.

After a quick breakfast we moved out, hooked up the car and headed out. Within a few minutes we were crossing the Wisconsin River and a few miles later we crossed the norther stretch of the mighty Mississippi River. Here we are a thousand miles north of New Orleans and it's still a big river!

After crossing the Mississippi the sky started to cloud up and eventually we drove into a midwest thunderstorm. It's understandable. Here we are on a back country road crossing into Iowa with prairie lands all around us, the sun warming the land creating warm air updrafts, roiling clouds above with sheets of lightning lighting up the clouds and the occaisional jagged lance of pure energy thrown down by Zeus, after all what else could we be but target practice for the gods?

Eventually we drove out of the bad weather and ran into fifty miles of cross winds. Instead of being able to maintain a steady 60 mph, I was forced to keep it around forty in order to keep the rig on the road. But we finally made it into Clear Lake and found the Oakwood RV Park where we got a nice site not far from the lake. After getting set up and taking the dogs for a walk we did some much needed housekeeping and spent the rest of tnhe afternoon relaxing.

To see all of todays photos, click on:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mjdolanski

Distance for today, 154 miles. Total for the trip so far, 8,388 miles.