Day 16-July 21, 2014-To Tama, Iowa
Drove 241 miles in 5-3/4 hours most of the time on US-63 North.
Hot, about 91, humid and WINDY!
North, South, East or West???? We decided to go North, for the time being, anyway.
US-63 is a very nice road to travel on. It’s only two lanes most of the time but not much traffic and passing lanes every now and then just when you think the slow poke in front of you will never speed up. It goes through a few small towns, Macon-“The City of Maples”, Kirksville, where osteopathic medicine was founded and there’s still a big osteopathic teaching center, and Queen City, population 598-“Don’t Blink or You’ll Miss Us. There must be an Amish community here because we saw laundry hanging on lines and it’s Monday. Plus the “Share the Road with Buggies” signs, not to mention the horse poop on the road. We started our first book on tape-thanks Karla and Jon, it’s really good.
Scenery is okay, rolling hills in some places and really flat in others. Farms, corn fields, black angus cow ranches and some unidentifiable crops. Big, old houses all along the way.
Got into Iowa around noon and stopped in Bloomfield at the visitor center-really small with not much info and at a Wal-Mart in Oskaloosa to have lunch and fill up the gas tank. The GPS took us down really small, narrow residential streets when we were 3-1/2 miles away from the campground and just as we both were saying there must be a better way, the road was closed because of flooding. So we turned around and found the way we probably should have gone to begin with.
We’re at Meskwaki Casino, Hotel and RV Park in Tama, Iowa. The RV Park is in the rear of the casino. Casino campgrounds are always cheap because they think you’ll go in the casino-oh, how right they are! Between the two of us we came out even after playing for a couple of hours. Campground is clean, secure, roomy and level with a cement pad and picnic table next to the sight. There’s a shuttle that takes you right to the front door of the casino, but we drove over. This one has a 400 room hotel, big two-level parking garage, 1500 slot machines, spa, indoor pool, convention center and bingo room. And, of course, a buffet. There’s a sign on the RV office door that says “RV Guests-Please go to the Convention Center Hallway during Tornado or Severe Weather Warnings”. I’m glad the wind died down a bit during the evening.