August 1, we left Pikes Peak state Park on the Mississippi and traveled route 18 across the prairie of northern Iowa. It was a great day to be on the road, past small towns and fields of corn. The air is cool and there is a bit of a wind. We settle for the night in the parking lot of Walmart Mason City. The next morning we were to go to Oakwood Campground next to the lake. On the 6 miles there, Agatha would not shift out of 2nd and in fact stopped completely. The only response was "shit".
We got it to the truck stop and looked around for some help. Saturday is not the best day, but we found some lovely people at Gus's Repair who gave us some names to try Monday. We managed to get her to the campground at least, and waited until Monday. This was the weekend of the classic car event in Clear Lake and there were all sorts of Mustangs, GTOs, 57 Chevys, Raodrunners, etc. At the campground Don and Pier were across from us. They had a big converted bus RV and a yellow 57 chevy. Don looked at the RV and we thought it might be the transmission, but it wasn't. They are very nice people. In fact everyone I meet in IOWA was very nice.
Sunday we went into town and realized this was Iowa's beach town. It reminded me of being at the shore. There was a free concert, CELEBRATION IOWA, with the best High school musicians. They were amazingly good. I'm sure we will see some on American Idol. We had ice cream and brownies from the church ladies. The weather was beautiful. It was a perfect day.
Tuesday morning we tried to go to the repair shop, but alas Agatha was not going to do anything...she stopped dead and there was some smoke coming out of her. I called Good Sam's for a tow. They said they were going to tow us 34 miles. I'm thinking there goes the Hobo convention, since I expected to be towed towards Des Moines. The truck instead was taking us to Britt. Britt of all places, exactly where we wanted to be.
We followed the tow truck down Rt. 18 to a small town and into the parking lot of Pritchards Ford. It was 2pm and very hot. I felt so discouraged with every bad possibility running through my brain. Dakota and I sat under a tree while Mike talked to the mechanics. There was good news and bad news. It was not the transmission, it was the computer board that we just replaced in Ohio. It seems there was a short in it and it caught fire. We were lucky that the whole thing didn't burn, and it will take about a week to get the replacement parts.
The folks at Pritchards let us stay in the RV in their parking lot. They hooked us up with an extension cord so we had a light and the fan. Ok we can get by.
The Pritchard lot is on RT 18 just outside town. There is a big field, where we saw a deer eating the soy beans. Across the street are fields of corn as far as you can see, only broken up by clumps of trees where the farmhouses are located. In the distance are the towering windmills. Rt18 is a main highway and is made if concrete with asphalt lines. Every night I went to bed with the sound of slubb, slubb, slubb of the tires over the asphalt. It became a music. At night the moon was out and we watched the bats fly around the lights of the lot. It was actually nice there.
No comments:
Post a Comment