Here we are in Fort Dodge, IA for a few days to visit my brother who lives there. He’s been talking for months about a ‘free’ grill that he got from a friend of his and now we know why it was ‘free.’ He’s spent hours on it trying to get it to work like it should. And he’s spent more money than I would have spent buying the ‘perfect’ parts. Sometimes ‘free’ is not ‘free’. Jack thinks his friend saw him coming. But, he wanted to cook us a meal on it. Well, yeah, after all that work, let’s eat!! Here are the two guys looking at the grill. Wow! Don’t they look like they know what they’re doing? (Maybe I’ll order out.)
Meanwhile, we’re in Kennedy Park outside Fort Dodge. Very nice campground and a very nice park: public golf course, picnic tables, nice trails, bird blind, dog training area, boat landing, fishing. Just a nice all around park. Here’s our site, with trees and a nice bit of real estate. My only problem with the campground is that you can’t reserve a spot. I’m not excited about getting all the way to the campground and not finding a spot. Now what? The next campground is 20 miles away at least. We figured that getting there on a weekday would get us a spot with full hook-ups. And, it did. However, by Thursday, every full hook-up spot was full and a lot of the electric only spots were too. Popular local park but we saw license plates from Washington, Florida and other states here also. It’s a local secret that has gotten out. Maybe, everyone’s positive reviews of the park are working TOO well.
We got there about noon and called our friends to find out where they were. They weren’t too far away and were coming in soon. I drove our car over to save a spot for them. They came in 2 hours later and we greeted them. Haven’t seen them since last September. Lots of phone calls and e-mails but it was nice to see them in person. They just got back from Alaska and have kept up appraised of all their adventures.
Here’s a view of the lake through the Memorial section of the park. Lots of dedicated trees and lots of stones for Fort Dodge members of the military, both living and dead.
Nice river running through the park.
We came across a tiny baby bunny on the trail. Can you see it there in the lower right hand of the picture? We wondered if it was injured and that is why it didn’t hop away. Or, maybe it’s too young to know that it needs to hop away from humans. I hope it moves before something gets it.
Beautiful flowers along the trail. Oh, these are weeds, not flowers? Yeah, but they are still beautiful. Nothing prettier than an Iowa weed.
We also invited Jack over for dinner. Looks like I’m trying to talk to Jack and he’s giving me the old ‘ Whatever.’
We were there three days, sunny, warm and all around pleasant days.
Then, just as we were leaving, a storm came up. Actually, it rained all night, sometimes light, other times it was a downpour and kept us awake - the rain drops were that big, that loud and that insistent. Here is the radar showing where we are, the blue dot and the weather that has just passed over us. BTW, the weather was coming from the southwest and we went through the whole long section of this ‘weather.’ That little red section - right over us for a while - it seemed like a long while. In fact, we decided that, since we had only 90 miles to drive, we would wait until the rain ended. Who wants to bring in slides, pull up levels and pads in the rain?
We had lakes in the park when the rain let up for a while. Can I go fishing here? Our campsite was high and dry, luckily we were not in a ‘puddle.’
In a lull, we pulled our slides in - very slowly to let the water drain, picked up the pads, hitched up the Jeep and were on our way. We saw an RV circling looking for a spot (must have had a miserable time driving here in the downpour). We flagged it down and offered our campsite. ‘Circle around and come in as we’re leaving.’
We had some rain on the way but not too much and, when we got to the next campground, it was mostly dry - they had not had much rain at all.
Here’s a picture of when we were heading out of the Fort Dodge campground, looks like it is truly a ‘Lakeside’ Golf Course.
‘There are two kinds of people who walk into a room. Those who say ‘There you are’, the other says ‘Here I am’.
Pauline Phillips (Dear Abby)
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