Day 23 -- Onawa to Adel, Iowa -- 157 Miles

Last night Concetta looked up the rain prediction for Onawa, Iowa, were we had camped for two days, and we both were dismayed at the results. The prediction was for an 80% chance of heavy rain, perhaps progressing to a 90% chance. Already many of the campers around us needed a canoe to get to their RV doors (photo left and below right). From the distance we could see that the lake beside which we were parked had come up so far that it seemed to be threatening the nearby, low-lying cabins.

Part of the reason we stayed for two days was that it just didn't look safe to drive in the heavy rain, let alone afford us any opportunity to visit any interesting sites.

Our weather so far in the plains states has reminded me a lot of that Ray Bradbury short story published in 1950 called "The Long Rain." I read it in the early 1960s when my literary tastes trended toward writers like Heinlein, Bradbury, and others in the Science Fiction genre. Here's the Wiki description of the tale:

"The story is set on the Planet Venus in a jungle where a group of four men whose rocket has crashed are attempting to reach the safety of a Sun Dome. Bradbury portrays Venus as having nearly eternal rains. The men are led by a character who is only identified as 'the Lieutenant'. One of the men is killed by a lightning strike when he tries to run when 'he shouldn't have jumped up'. The three remaining men make their way to a Sun Dome, but find that it has been destroyed and offers no shelter from the rain."

"One of the men becomes despondent and stops responding, instead staring up into the rain. He is shot by Simmons who defends his actions as a mercy killing, preventing the man from slowly drowning as his lungs fill up with rain. As Simmons and the Lieutenant continue on to where they think the next Sun Dome should be, Simmons believes that he is also going to go insane before they reach safety, and so commits suicide."

"The Lieutenant continues on, and finally reaches the Sun Dome where he is warm and safe, with dry clothing and hot chocolate; although Bradbury hints that the refuge may just be a hallucination."

I think it was writers like Bradbury and Heinlein, so adept at painting pictures with words, who first began to awaken my thirst for words, and the yarns' skillful writers can spin with them. Now, as an adult, I find I just love words. I love the often convoluted origins of words. I love the mixture of foreign and domestic words in our language that doesn't even illicit comment anymore we're all so used to them.

I especially love trying to find a better word that describes something more thoroughly, or a more subtle word that might leave an impression more nebulous and less harsh. Right now we're listening to a book on tape about Abraham Lincoln and his generals during the civil war. Until listening to Lincoln's subtlety of speech, as revealed through his letters, I never knew what mastery of the English language he had attained. Most of his generals were a poor match for Lincoln in contests of semantics.

Of course, for describing the weather of the past several weeks, there are no words other then to say that if we were on Bradbury's Venus we wouldn't be any worse off. Most of the time it rains. It might be a drizzle, or it might be a watery barrage, but the key is the incessant nature if it. When we pass creeks and minor rivers they're full, bank to bank, and coming close to overflowing. The driest of the farmers' fields we pass are soggy and distressed-looking, while the lowest places are completely flooded.

Thankfully, last night it did NOT rain on us, 80% chance or not, and this morning though the ground was as soggy as the Israelites must have found the bottom of the Red Sea when Moses parted the waters, we were able to pack up and get out before the rains returned.

After driving some county roads for a short time, we were able to pick up the historic Lincoln Highway route, now Interstate 30 in Iowa, and cruise what was in 1913 the very first transcontinental, coast-to-coast route in existence. Though our cruise on the Lincoln only lasted 72 miles before we had to turn off and drift down toward Des Moines, we did enjoy the occasional small town architecture and rural character of the Father of American Interstate Highways.

We did enjoy a couple of lucky breaks today: first, the rain completely stopped once we got to camp near Adel, Iowa, this afternoon, and I was able to set up without wearing rain gear; and second, Concetta was able to get all of our laundry done shortly thereafter as no one was using the limited number of machines in the laundry room of the KOA, and she was able to monopolize most of them.

At the same time that the laundry was in progress, I heard a piece of good news while checking out the RV supplies in the office. A fellow camper let slip that it was going to be 80 degrees by the end of the week. Now I'm not going to believe it until I see it with my own eyes, perhaps as I engage the rig's air conditioner, but I remain hopeful that he knew what he was talking about and wasn't just toying with me.

But neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor dark of night will stay this motor home from it's appointed rounds. So stay tuned and see what happens next. Until then, we wish you Happy (and dry) Travels!