BACK HOME

We arrived safely and had a really great time on this trip to Wisconsin, and Lake Superior. We dropped off the car to Wayne and had the brakes fixed and was ready to go again. Scallop season is still opened so we took Zack and his friend Michael scalloping at St. Joe and had a fun time. We didn't do too bad considering this was our first time. We were planning to scallop the next morning, but TS Claudette popped up. We pulled the boat out of the water and headed home.

Birmingham-Oak Mountain

Oak Mountain state park in Birminham, AL is where we spent our last night on the road. It was a nice campground and you wouldn't know you were in a city. We left out early in the morning headed for Chipley.

Tupelo, Mississippi

We pulled into state park at Tupelo Mississippi and the place was empty except for one camper. It was a great place to do some hiking and chill out. We stayed 2 nights and cleaned out the car and organized our stuff again. We did not see Elvis or visit his home place so I hope he forgives us. This will have to be another day and trip.

Sandy Beach Campground Iowa 8-02 thru 8-7

After driving over 300 miles which we broke our rule we made it to Sandy Beach Campground. This was a really nice Corp campground between Cedar Rapids Iowa and Iowa City. We had a mishap about a mile from the campground. When we made the turn we blew our tire on the right side of trailer and hit the curve pretty hard. We limped in, got our campsite and set up camp. Alan changed out the tire with the spare and then we went the next day looking for another spare to have with us. When Alan was putting the spare back on the rig he notice that part of the trailer was broken. This was an important part because if we had to slam on brakes then the boat would have either landed in the back of us or come off the trailer and hurt someone else on the road behind us. We were also trying to take it easy on the brakes on the Tahoe because they were giving us a problem. At this point I just want to limp home to Wayne's Auto our trusted mechanic.

We called the manufacture of boat trailer and the part was being shipped to us, but it would be 2 days. We decided to rent an economy car to tour Iowa since we would be there for a week and to save the brakes on the Tahoe.

We rented the car and set out for Kalona(the amish country of Iowa) and Swedesburg( home of the swedish museum). We covered quite a few miles and saw a lot of farmland. There was miles and miles of corn and soybeans as far as the eye could see.

The next day we decided on visiting northwest Iowa and Wisconsin.

The third day we drove to Ames Iowa and saw the university, then to Winterset which is home to the many covered bridges in Iowa. This is also the area where the movie "Bridges over Madison County" was filmed. We had lunch at a cute little coffee shop that had wi-fi. The town had a great little downtown area and no WALMART. It seemed like you were going back in time with small business and drug stores with soda fountains. They had a Rexall drugs that had the soda fountain and grill just like the one I used to go into at Clewiston as a kid. It is a shame we don't see more of that in this country instead of the BIG corporate stores that come in and put these little guys out of business.

After Winterset we drove back to campsite exploring along the way.

We missed the UPS delivery of the part so we had to drive into Cedar Rapids and pick it up at the UPS center. Mission accomplished and Alan put the part back home and we were ready to roll again. We really enjoyed the week in Iowa exploring and it is really a nice place to visit. We had been through there traveling a few times, but having to wait on part gave us an opportunity to really see it.