Days 3 and 4 Rock Springs, WY to Curt Gowdy State Park, WY to Des Moines, IA 885 miles

Sorry I missed a day. You will know why if you keep reading. And, warning...this post will be longer.

Wyoming is beautiful and I incorrectly called it "Big Sky Country" in my last post. My son-in-law very gently let me know that is Montana. Such a typical Californian mistake to have all those states in vicinity of each other blend together as one. I am a Californian through and through. My parents were both born and raised in San Francisco, and although I consider myself sophisticated in many ways, knowledge and understanding of other states is not one of them. Hence, my anticipation of this trip.

Day 3 was to end in Colorado in Estes Park in the Rockies. When Hilary and I planned the trip we thought that adding a few hours of driving here and there to go to some great places was a splendid idea. The reality of it is that being on the road all those hours only to get up the next day and get on the road for more hours isn't quite as romantic as it sounded when we sat in the living room and talked about it. At lunch we decided that we could skip Estes Park, Colorado and shave 2.5 hours off our drive. I found an "RV Vacation Park" that sounded great in the description but when we pulled up to it, Hilary quickly found a state park nearby. We have pictures of each place and we will let you decide if we made the right choice. (Still planning to post some of those pictures...). The state park does not have internet and the state park does not have electricity hook-up so I both could not write my post nor send it. I have to tell you we are learning a lot on this trip about all the things we take for granted.

Day 4 is today and we woke up early knowing that we had an 8.5 hour drive today. If you do not own a trailer or RV you may not know that there is a thing called "hook-ups" that allow you to have electricity, water and a place to rid yourself of your gray or black water (I'll let you figure that out). Most state parks do not have hook-ups and Curt Gowdy is one of those parks so, this morning, when I opened the door after not being able to shower, Thomas took one look at me and sweetly said "maybe on the way back home we might want to stop at a hotel every three nights or so". I am still working hard on being a good sport about this!

We drove through the entirety of Nebraska today. Nebraska is literally thousands of acres of corn fields and it turns out they are not as high as an elephant's eye. More like as high as my eye. We saw real cowboys wrangling cattle, herds of buffalo, a stray deer here and there and a llama farm. All this along Interstate 80. I expected Nebraska to be boring but it was not. It is actually quite pretty to see all those green fields. We also passed the halfway point of our trip in Lexington, NE. Yay us!

Now we are in Iowa. We were exhausted when we pulled into the Shady Brook RV and Camp Park in Earlham, IA. Before I explain why we are now in Des Moines, let me just say that Iowa is charmingly beautiful. It also is covered in corn but it is rolling hills and sweet little farmhouses along the highway. I spent a summer when I was 17 in Iowa and I loved it then; now I remember why. And just to push the charm even further are the lightening bugs we saw. Now for the not so charming part of our experience. Shady Brook had our reservation for tomorrow (I am sure it was my error with dates). Luckily they had one more site left. Unfortunately that one squeezed right up against another site that had a campfire going (I am allergic to fires if you can believe that!) and what I think was Journey music playing on the outside stereo. Also, Shady Brook didn't really have hook-ups in the way that it usually means so there would be no shower or blog post coming our way this evening. And it was about 92 degrees with something called humidity that a native Californian does not understand. After I was done making our mac and cheese and broccoli for dinner and I was dripping in sweat, we all decided (yes, not just me) that there was likely a nice Residence Inn up the road in Des Moines only half an hour away. That is where I am right now at 10 minutes before midnight writing this entry. We are all happy campers tonight and we are not setting the alarm!

Since Thomas doesn't have to get up early and do all the many things you have to do to get a trailer ready to go, he is going to take a crack at getting pictures posted. So tune in for that.