Rude awakening

We are at the Lake Fisher Park in Bloomfield, Iowa (map). This is actually a municipal park, despite being a mile or so from town. There is a small campground here, just six sites, but each has a 50-amp pedestal and access to a water spigot. Sites also have tables and three of them have fire rings. Not bad for just $10 per night; stays of up to ten nights are permitted. In addition to the campground, the park has a disc golf course, playground, ball field, picnic shelters and, of course, the lake. We have the whole campground to ourselves.

We had an excellent visit and stay with our friends. We ended up spending six nights, through the duration of our conference. Five of those nights we dined together, and the final night, where our conference ran through dinner, we enjoyed cocktails on the deck afterward. They also gave us a great tour of Des Moines and we spent a pleasant evening at the Arts Festival. We are very grateful to them for their hospitality.

Yesterday morning we had figured to sleep in a little bit (remember those cocktails?) and then get ready to roll. Instead I awoke to the sound of a klaxon -- how my phone rings when the call is from the Red Cross Disaster Operations Center. We are not on call this month, so it caught me by surprise, and by the time I climbed out of bed and made it to the phone it had stopped. No message was left and I opted to have my first cup of coffee before calling back in to see what was up.

They were scrambling to assemble leadership teams for Tropical Storm Debby in Florida, and the Colorado wild fires, and I think they were hoping to send a Chief. By the time I called back in they had filled the list with people who are actually on call this month, which is good because we were really not well-positioned for those disasters anyway. One of the on-call leaders was our host, Mark, and shortly after my phone rang he found out he was headed to Denver. I feel a bit guilty because I think our presence for the last few days kept him from getting the lawn mowed before he left. I did check to see if we could drop him at the airport on our way out of town, but DSM has 12'0" clearance on its approach roads.

We did go right past the airport as we left Des Moines on IA-5, one of the few highways in this part of the state that travels at an angle to south or east. After a brief stop at the Walmart in Knoxville for provisions, the road narrowed from divided highway to two-lane through rolling hills, a very pleasant drive. US-34 took us the rest of the way into Ottumwa, where we had figured to stop for the night at the municipal campground.

It was still early in the day when we rolled up on it, and it was fairly unappealing from the road -- lots of rigs, fairly closely spaced. At $15, we figured we could do better by continuing on our route, which turned south in Ottumwa onto US-63. This spot was only another half hour along, and fit the bill nicely, especially being empty as it was.

Now that the leadership pool has been depleted staffing the current disasters, and with things happening fast and furious on the disaster landscape, we feel the need to pick up the pace and make Kentucky before our on-call availability comes up. We don't want to get diverted to the coast or elsewhere without getting the chance to see the boat there. Between here and there we will pass through St. Louis, where by coincidence some of our nomadic friends are already meeting up, and we'll stop there Wednesday night to have dinner with them. That will still give us two days to make it to the lake before we go on-call.

From here we will head east and south on state routes 2 and 15 across the border into Missouri, where state routes 15 and 6 will bring us to the Great River Road. I expect tonight we will be in Palmyra, or maybe Hannibal.

Good friends and conferences

We are parked at the home of friends near Earlham, Iowa, about a half hour west of Des Moines. No map link today in respect of their privacy. We arrived Tuesday afternoon after the short drive from Dayton; as it happened, our friends were out when we pulled up, so they arrived back home to find a giant bus in their driveway. It was a bit of a squeeze into a narrow driveway under some low trees, but it's a wonderfully shady spot, they have a nice property, and they've generously provided us a 15-amp power circuit.

This last item was plenty to run the air conditioner Tuesday and part of Wednesday when it was quite a bit hotter; it's cooled down some and we're enjoying the shade and a nice breeze. Once the A/C was off our batteries charged all the way up. The other service they are generously providing to us is access to their high-speed network connection, which has been essential for our conference, which started Wednesday and will run through Sunday.

That conference would be the annual General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association, to which we are again voting delegates from our congregation, which comprises, among others, many folks like ourselves who, for one reason or another, are not served by a brick-and-mortar congregation. Long-time readers will know that we have attended many General Assemblies in the past, always in person. They are held in major cities with large conference centers, and the last one we attended was in Minneapolis two years ago. We missed last year's event in Charlotte, NC because we sprung an oil leak en route, and ended up diverting instead to the Choo Choo Garage near Chattanooga.

This year's event is being held in Phoenix, Arizona. Before the last of our restaurant investments in downtown Phoenix closed its doors in March, we had planned to attend this conference in person as well, sort of a two-for-one deal. With that motivation gone, Phoenix was long way off-route from Seattle to Sioux Falls, and it's hotter than the hubs of Hades in June, so we opted to skip it.

Fortunately, the organization has instituted a system to engage delegates remotely via streaming video, computer polling, and teleconference technology, and so we were able to honor our commitment to be delegates again this year. There's simply no way, however, that we can stream the video from the conference using our on-board satellite technology. For one thing, the satellite bandwidth is just a bit too low for the video stream to work properly, and for another, that much video would exceed our daily download allotment of 475 MB.

We'd been scratching our heads about where to park to get an unlimited high-speed wireless connection, including researching full-service RV parks and even considering hopping between Flying-J truck stops and buying a few days of their wireless plan. So we are very grateful to Mark and Mary for letting us use their Internet service while we are here. Mark moved their WiFi access point a bit closer to the bus, and I've been displaying the conference video on our 32" monitor, with the audio through our stereo system. It's almost like being there, except I can attend the early-morning sessions in my bathrobe.

When we are not in session, we've been enjoying the company of our friends, who have been sharing the bounty of their enormous garden at meal times. We're done with our meeting for today, and this afternoon we will all be heading downtown to the Des Moines Arts Festival, which we have heard is not to be missed. We'll have dinner someplace downtown as well.

Our conference runs through 8pm Sunday. We are trying to be mindful of our hosts and their schedules, so it is not clear we'll be here all the way to the end or if we will do the last session or two from elsewhere. Whenever we do leave here, though -- Monday morning at the latest -- we will head south and east. (This is Iowa -- "southeast" is not an option, as the whole state road system is pretty much a rectilinear grid.) We will work our way over to the Mississippi and thence downriver to Saint Louis, en route to Kentucky.

Power-hungry

We are at Oak Park, a municipal park in Dayton, Iowa (map). There is a camping area here in between the golf course and the rodeo grounds, where 30 amps of power can be had for $12 per night. We've moved into hot, humid weather, and having the power to run a couple air conditioners is not yet essential, but welcome.

After leaving Cabela's yesterday, we diverted a bit west of the freeway onto US-69 in Albert Lea, MN. Knowing we are now in the part of the country where many towns have small municipal campgrounds, usually right in town and often with inexpensive or even free electric hookups, Louise combed through the directories looking for a power pedestal along our route.

She came up with a wonderful city park in the town of Webster City, right on the Boone River. The guide said they had quite a few pedestals, and the first night or two would be free. On top of that, Webster City is exactly where we had planned to cross over from US-69 to IA-17 a bit further west, and while it was a little past the halfway mark en route to our friends, it was still a comfortable day.

The park turned out to be a real gem, just a short walk from downtown. Unfortunately, it also turned out to be closed, with a hand-written wooden sign to that effect leaning against the closed gate. We assume there is some damage still from last year's river flooding in this region. It was very disappointing, especially at 4:30 in the afternoon, when we were both ready to stop.

This park was our backup option, but it was nearly another hour of driving, including a very tricky 3-point turn to extricate ourselves from the closed park in Webster City -- with the gates closed, there was not really enough room to turn the coach around. In hindsight, we should have stopped just a bit earlier, at the Winnebago headquarters plant in Forest City, along the Winnebago River in Winnebago county. Two night's free power are available there, too, and you don't even need a Winnebago. (No, we did not stop to take the factory tour, although clearly many people make the pilgrimage to do so.)

The extra driving yesterday means we will have a short day today, with just 65 miles to go. Dayton did not have the dining options of either Webster City or Forest City, so I ended up grilling a steak for dinner, which was a little strange standing more or less on the golf course. There are only three other rigs here, notwithstanding some 40-odd power hookups. I imagine it fills up when the rodeo is in town on Labor Day.

Trapped in Iowa

We are at the municipal campground in Keokuk, Iowa, right on the Mississippi (map). And by right on, I nearly mean right in -- when we arrived yesterday the river was within inches of the bank. If we wanted a campfire. there is an enormous supply of driftwood littering the river trail east of here. The level has dropped about a foot since we arrived.

Today we are the only ones here, although there was one other rig when we arrived. This area has room for five rigs with 30-amp power; a bit further downriver is a much larger lot with perhaps a dozen pedestals with 50-amp power. That lot is more spartan, having once been the parking for a long-gone casino riverboat. It, too, was empty when we arrived.

At $16 per night it's not exactly a bargain, but we needed the power, and having a riverfront site mostly to ourselves is nice. The Keokuk Junction and BNSF rail yards are across the street, so we have a view of the towboats out one side and the trains out the other. We're right at home here, and both those modes of transportation have the effect of making Odyssey look lilliputian.

Camping is paid for over at the museum, housed in a land-locked, century-old paddlewheel towboat called the Geo. M. Verity. When we wandered in there today to pay we found out that the bridge and road southwest of here across the Des Moines river and into Missouri, on our planned route of US-61, is flooded out, and so we are "trapped" here. We can see if the flooding subsides tomorrow, or we can cross into Illinois and back again at Quincy.

Last night we walked a few blocks uphill to The Cellar restaurant and bar, which had a panoramic view over the river and inexpensive but tasty food. Tonight we are working our way through leftovers. If it cools off a bit later, we may walk out onto the remains of the old highway deck on top of the railroad bridge, now an observation platform. From there can be seen the massive Lock #19 and the last remaining bit of the Des Moines Rapids Canal.

We drove through most of downtown Keokuk on our way here, and although we somehow missed the statue of Chief Keokuk, I think we got our fill of the town. Today was so hot we mostly stayed inside, which was fine since we both had Red Cross projects to work on, including an hour-plus conference call this afternoon. It was when we wrapped up that call that we decided to just spend another night, not yet knowing that the river had already planned that for us. Tomorrow we may extend yet another day, if it looks like that will buy us a pass back onto our preferred route.

It's good that our plans are very flexible. Yesterday we were unceremoniously booted off the Great River Road in downtown Muscatine by some kind of construction project. The detour, just a block into the riverfront, took us all the way inland to US-61, and, once there, we decided to just stay on that all the way to Burlington, whose eponymous rail line is the forebear of today's BNSF. The River Road would have followed SR-99, which isn't riverside anyway.

Into the furnace

We are at the Isle of Capri Casino in Bettendorf, Iowa (map). The casino allows RVs to park in a large paved lot at the eastern (upriver) end of the property, right across the levee from their marina.

From this vantage we had a great view of the fireworks on Sunday night. We set up the rooftop deck and put our chairs up, and I counted no fewer than nine and perhaps more like a dozen professional fireworks displays. In addition to the city of Bettendorf's own display, which was due north of us and mostly visible above a ridge in that direction, we also saw displays across the river in Moline, East Moline, Rock Island, and a few others I could not identify. There was something just northeast of us, and a couple upriver, perhaps Le Claire, IA, or Hampton, IL. We sat on the deck for a good hour nursing a glass of wine, enjoying the cooler night air, and taking in all the displays. The roof deck also put our eye level a few feet above the levee top, and we had a nice view of the river.

There is a water shuttle service called the Channel Cat that stops at the casino's marina just yards from here, and if we were staying a bit longer we'd think about visiting the other three or four stops it makes. It runs in a big loop, and $6 lets you ride all day. The casino property is interconnected with an enclosed walkway system, which will take you to the new Quad Cities Convention Center right across the train tracks from us. If it was just a bit cooler we might stay another day or so.

We had a very pleasant drive here down the Great River Road from Marquette. In Dubuque, where we once again encountered US-61, the road joins US-52 and follows it all the way here, so we had reasonably good alignment and road surface. Our guide said there was a Corps of Engineers park right on the river south of Bellevue and above Dam #13, and as we rolled through downtown Bellevue we decided to see if there might be room. The city was clearly having a nice holiday celebration, and signs proclaimed that there would be a free ski show at 6pm; people were already setting up their chairs along the riverfront, just downstream of Dam #12 in the center of town.

Little did we know as we rolled through that the town's July Fourth celebration had turned deadly that morning, with one killed and 23 injured by parade horses that spooked. In hindsight, after we learned of the accident, the town did seem oddly subdued for one with such an extensive celebration. In any case, the CoE park was, unsurprisingly, full, thus ending any notion of stopping there and riding the scooters back to town for the show.

We continued here to the Isle of Capri, making for a fairly long days' drive, and stumbled into the buffet for dinner. We were hoping for the nicer table-service Farraday's Restaurant, but it is closed Sunday and Monday nights. It was relatively cool when we arrived here on Sunday, and we strolled around the marina and down the levee trail to the nice city park just west of the bridge.

Yesterday we had planned to move along. However, by morning, Sunday night's four tropical investigation areas, one of which had been forecast as having a 50% chance of becoming a cyclone, had dropped to just two areas, one with near 0% and one with less than a 30% probability of cyclonic development. This latter area showed a forecast track right to Brownsville, where the Red Cross already has a team left over from Alex, and so our own personal alert level was greatly reduced from Sunday evening.

It was also quite overcast yesterday morning, which kept the temperature in check, and we decided to just sit here for a day and get some things done, including listing another eight items on eBay from the great closet purge. By mid-afternoon, however, that was starting to look like a bad choice, as the overcast lifted and temperatures rapidly climbed into the uncomfortable zone. We ended up running an air conditioner from late afternoon until early this morning, and that necessitated three to four hours of generator run time. At $3+ per hour, that can quickly negate the benefits of a free parking space. With temperatures forecast to climb, on top of the naturally warmer temperatures the further south we travel, we will now officially be in the mode of looking for at least minimal power at most of our stops from here south.

It's already in the 80s here today, and climbing, so in a few minutes we'll fire up the Detroit, turn on some air conditioners, and get under way. Louise spent two years here in Bettendorf while she was growing up, with her dad stationed at Rock Island Arsenal, and we'll take a quick spin around the old neighborhood on our way out of town. Then we'll continue down the Great River Road towards the Missouri state line.

And the rockets' red glare

Old glory near the Marquette-Joliet bridge.

We are parked at the Lady Luck casino in Marquette, Iowa (map), across the river from Prairie du Chien. We arrived Friday afternoon after a lovely drive that encompassed both sides of the river. The western Great River Road departs the river between Reno and Lansing and again between Lansing and Harpers Ferry, and consists primarily of county roads. So we crossed the river at La Crosse, Wisconsin and then back again right here, and enjoyed Wisconsin 35, closer to the river and having better alignment. Now that we're in Iowa the situation reverses, and we'll stay on this side all the way to the Quad Cities.

This is actually a very small casino, on a riverboat named the Miss Marquette. A shore-side building houses a buffet restaurant and a bar, with an enclosed walkway connecting to the boat. Our guide said there were three marked RV spaces here and that there might be some power. It is owned and operated by Isle of Capri casinos, for whom we have a special fondness.

Ever since we first stayed at their property in Fort Lauderdale, one of the corporate marketing people there has been following our blog, I think via my Twitter feed. We always get a hearty welcome from her when we land at one of their casinos, and someone from the marketing department has posted RV-friendly comments on the entries for almost all their properties on the Casino Camper web site. These folks get it -- it costs almost nothing to welcome RVers, and most of us spend at least some money at the property.

Since then I've been following several of their Twitter streams and keeping an eye out for their properties along our route. Although Louise would probably say I'm biased because their marketing staff appears entirely composed of attractive and vibrant young women. In any case, having built something of a relationship with the company came in handy on this visit.

When we arrived we indeed found there to be three marked RV spaces. Unfortunately, two rigs were already here, and one of them had quite rudely straddled two out of the three stalls.



We were able to squeeze in to the next stall over, about the same size as the first three but not specifically marked for RV's. That still put us in reach of the power outlets, a pair of 20-amp duplex receptacles on a stake next to the first space. Unfortunately, one of the two 20-amp circuits was completely dead, and in addition to us being the third rig, another rig came along shortly after us and parked two stalls over.

I got my tools out and disassembled both receptacles to check the wiring and make sure it was nothing as simple as a bad GFCI, but no such luck. (Long-time readers will know that I am no stranger to repairing receptacles all over the country.) I even found the electrical panel and checked the breakers, which were both "on". I suspected a bad breaker or a loose wire in the panel, but I had figured it was best to draw the line at unscrewing the panel cover -- casinos have cameras everywhere. So I fired off a message to our new friends at headquarters, asking if they could secure permission for me to continue my repair.

Within a few minutes we had first a manager, then one of the maintenance workers visit us, and the maintenance guy and I were able to quickly track the problem to a bad breaker. He had spares back at the shop (I carry them, too) and a short while later a new breaker was installed and all was well. Since then we've had one of the two 20-amp circuits mostly to ourselves, and between that and our whizzy load-supplementing inverter and battery bank, we've been able to run an air conditioner for the few hours we've needed it. It has been climbing into the mid 80s in the afternoons.

Friday night we took the scooters to McGregor, just a mile down river, and had a nice dinner at the Old Man River brew pub. We also found a coin laundry there, to which Louise returned yesterday. In addition, we discovered the schedule for the combined Marquette/McGregor schedule of holiday festivities. Due to some confusion we actually missed the parade yesterday morning in downtown Marquette, but we did pass by the flea market and hatched a plan to take in the fireworks display. We ate yesterday at the casino buffet, which was quite good although in a surprisingly small room, commensurate, I suppose, with the whole small-town nature of this little stretch of river.

Last night before sunset we scooted down to the little city park-cum-marina at the water's edge with our lawn chairs and settled in for the fireworks. We had previously scoped out the open decks of the river boat, which would have been a great view, however there would be no comfortable place to sit and we did not guess we could get lawn chairs past security.

In addition to most of the populations of Marquette and McGregor, I would guess people came from far and wide to watch, possibly even a good portion of Prairie du Chien across the river. Dozens of boats arrived from up and down river and anchored along the banks or tied up to the city docks for the show. It was a good show, lasting perhaps half an hour, with a very small-town-America feel to it, and the weather was perfect. We were glad we stayed right here in Marquette for it, as it was a nice compromise between last year's austere Fourth and the chaos of a large-city celebration.

We generally try not to drive on holiday weekends, and this would be a fine place to wait it out through Tuesday morning, with several more restaurants to sample in these two towns and a power outlet to boot. However, we feel compelled to continue south today, in part because two tropical investigation areas sprung up this morning in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. We had intended to amble, perhaps stopping next at the casino in Dubuque, but I think we will probably press on to Louise's childhood home of Bettendorf. That would give us easy access to Interstates 80 and 74, as well as US-67, putting us within the mandatory two-day distance of most of the gulf coast.