It rained the whole first day of our trip. It was a little stressful knowing that we were planning to camp that night. We discussed the possibility of sleeping in the car or getting a hotel room, but were hopeful the rain would clear.
This place claims to be the worlds largest truck-stop. I'm pretty sure they are right. It is only a little smaller than "The Mall of Victor Valley!" Well...I'm exaggerating.
We saw this sign and thought..."that looks like a good place to camp." A few miles down the road we saw a sign for the same place that said "private campground, members only." I decided to proceed thinking, "what exactly does "private" and "member" mean?" I assumed it meant that passers by were welcome to join their secret club for the evening.
The owners let us stay for the night even though that wasn't the policy. We set our tent up in the rain and it rained off and on till about midnight. The tent kept us warm and dry, and Kristi read a chapter in "My Side of the Mountain" before turning the lights out.
I stepped out at about midnight to see what the weather was up to. All the clouds had cleared! There is not much light pollution in the middle of Iowa, so the stars were beautiful.
While I was outside, I ran into this firefly that I named "Phil". I brought him back to the tent to show Kristi and the kids (yes I woke them up at midnight to show them a firefly) and he flew around the tent. He landed on the window, and I snapped the picture above to the left. Then he landed on my camera lens so I took this splendid closeup of his backside. I hope this picture gets glowing feedback ;)
We enjoyed a bowl of Cheerios (product placement) before setting off for Nebraska. Despite the rain, we had a great night and really enjoyed our stay at Koch's Meadow Lake Campground.
