Up on the road really early to try to air out the cow manure smell from the truck before the day's heat hit. Think I'm getting wimpy in my older age. Took I-76 to I-80to meet friends, one of the few interstate roads on this journey.
Today was a pure travel day other than the joy of meeting up with fellow TCers TinCanSailor and SailorsMate in Paxton, Nebraska. They were heading west from MA, we were heading east and with the miracle of GPS and cell phones we met up. We traded places to go and see and I gave Toni a lot of the brochures we had collected along the way. This is their first long trip since retirement and the TC is proving perfect for what they want to do and where they want to go. Joe and Ron did a lot of looking over each other's TCs to see that everything was working well. The seal in our toilet is slowly leaking out flush water from the bowl and no amount of cleaning will stop it. Doesn't happen all the time but enough that we'll replace the seal or ?? when we get home. They had a great time discussing tires and rims while Toni and I drank a lot of water.
Nebraska is right in the middle of the Breadbasket of America. Miles and miles and endless miles of corn, hay, and other foods we couldn't identify.
And then there are the cattle! Missed getting a photo of the main part of this stockyard since we didn't want to open the window. Got the "tail" end. We do love a good steak and can appreciate a bit more the effort to get it to us.
Tonight we are in a superb Nebraska state park, Eugene Mahoney State Park in Ashland, NE. Big trees, paved pad with manicured grass around it, full utilities plus wi-fi for $19 plus a $4 park entry fee. To get air conditioner tonight, we'd probably have paid twice that. TC when we opened it up looked like this -
It's hard to find an out of the way, safe place to run a portable generator all night so we chose to go for power. We even went over to the Lodge and had the buffet for dinner. US Air Force SAC museum is at the park entry so we'll go through there before leaving Nebraska tomorrow headed into Iowa.
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June 26 - Iowa
Travel day in heat but overcast so it only got to 85F instead of 98F. We stay on red roads as much as possible but due to construction had to get travel I-80 a bit today.
The thundering 18 wheelers just get a bit too much after awhile.
There are hundreds of these huge windmills lined up in rows like a checkerboard. They
are adding even more as we saw a lot of the big vanes on flatbeds once we had to get back on I-80 for a bit. Many of the smaller country roads are being repaired. Thanks to Delorme GPS software we usually can figure out an easy way around the detours.
We stopped in Newton, Iowa at the Maytag Blue Cheese Farm.
Never had any idea of how blue cheese was made. We watched a film on the process and then took a tour of this immaculate small facility where all the employees looked like they were contented like the 200 head of Guernsey cows that provide the milk. happy people, great samples and we left with Havarti, Munster, and of course - blue cheese. This blue is nothing like what you can get in a grocery store. Smooth, creamy
and strong but not overpowering.
Tonight we are in the Corps of Engineers campground at Coralville Lake, Linder Point. Another great bargain at $8.00 with the old geezer pass as Joe calls his Golden Age access pass to federal facilities. Quiet, clean, electricity for the AC (86F is still hot) and some beautiful trails we walked down to the lake. Tomorrow we will go see the Devonian Fossil Gorge and then head further east. Looks like we are headed home and the total wandering has stopped. We'll wander a bit more but the line home is getting straighter.
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