We've moved across three states

 June 12 2023 Monday

We are still camped in the Sugar Bottom Campground just north of Iowa City. This morning was my appointment at the Wolfe Eye Clinic. Afterwards I wrote a couple paragraphs describing my eye injection procedure, but Millie said that’s too yucky and I can’t write that in the blog. I also wanted to tell you about the wonderful treatment I received from the female techs at the practice, but again Millie said no, this time my offense was using the term Female. That’s not allowed, I should have said hesheitthem techs.  

Millie has left the room so here goes. I’m pretty sure the doctor was a man but hesheitthem jabbed a needle in my eye. It’s not as bad as it sounds. Throughout the procedure I was pampered, prepped and watched over by a team of lovely hesheitthem techs. I didn’t inquire about their gender identity preferences, but they sure were pretty! ……Can I say that?

June 13 2023 Tuesday

A while back an army comrade and I made arrangements to meet today in Iowa City. Joe Schmitt had an appointment at the VA hospital and I was in town for the afore mentioned eye appointment. We met at the VA and had lunch in the cafeteria there. The sandwich was dry, the French fries were excellent and the conversation was splendid. 

Me on left, Joe Schmitt on right

Joe and I hadn’t seen each other since I think 2017 when we both were at our alumni reunion in Las Vegas. It is interesting that people who actually experienced combat rarely talk about it. We spent a hour and a half talking about grandchildren, politics, Careers after the army, our health, normal senior citizen conversation. We maybe mentioned our war once or twice. It was good to see him again.

Every time we left the campground we drove past a beautiful old Victorian house. It had been jacked off its foundation and was waiting to be moved. After we left town pictures of it started popping up on my facebook feed. It was built in 1870 and sold to the current owner for one dollar.

June 14 2023 Wednesday

We’re saying our goodbyes to Iowa and heading west today. Almost all the land outside the cities is in agriculture and Millie and I have seen enough crops growing to last us a while. We are doing something we rarely do, drive on the interstate highway system. 

As we drove along I-80 we continued to see tilled land, land being tilled and land with thousands of acres of crops. We passed John Deere dealers with Millions of dollars worth of farm equipment on display, Grain Silos bigger than anything we’ve ever seen. It leads me to believe there are a bunch of very rich farmers in Iowa.

A small sample of the inventory at this dealership

That's a lot of grain

Iowa also has a lot of dusty gravel roads, all made with white gravel.

After today’s drive of about 300 miles we over nighted in Lincoln Nebraska. We stayed in a very nice campground right off the interstate (still I-80) called Camp-a-Way. $60 for a pull thru full hook up. A little pricy compared to the state parks we’ve been in but we’re paying for the convenience and the ability to make a quick get away in the morning.

Camp-A-Way RV Park

June 15 2023 Thursday

I can’t really tell you much about Nebraska, only what we could see from the interstate. Speed limit west of Lincoln is 75 miles per hour. I stayed right at 70 in the morning, but in the afternoon when volume of trucks increased I pushed it up to 75 so as not to hinder traffic.

Nebraska is a little lumpier than Iowa but still mostly agriculture in the eastern part of the state, A little further on it changed to grass land. It reminded me of the old landscape paintings with herds of buffalo. 

Our original plan was to overnight at about 300 miles which would put us in the western part of the state. We didn’t take into account our move into the mountain time zone and reached our projected stopping point at 1:30 in the afternoon. We had stopped two times; once for fuel and then later for lunch and felt good about moving on. We reset the GPS for Boulder Colorado and kept rolling along. 

Probably the sadist campground we've stayed in so far.

We secured a campsite at the county fairgrounds in Longmont Colorado. It's not much, but it has pull thru sites for easy parking and exit, water and electric for $25 a night. Campgrounds in the area run from $60 to $150 a night, subsequently the more affordable state parks are always booked solid. After looking around at some of the derelict RV's while I was setting up I found myself humming the song "Gypsie's, tramps and thieves", but we were lucky to get a spot here. It also has a dump station for our tanks when we leave and trash dumpsters. We’re booked here for two nights. We drove just under 500 miles today.

29 days on the Road!