On-Ur-Wa RV Park and New Friends

 Sparky and Eldo made the trip from E.Moline, IL to this RV park in Onawa, Iowa today. It was 360 miles today and Sparky drove for awhile. Driving a fifth wheel is a piece of cake until: 1. you get into a city and have lots of traffic, 2. you have to pull into a big truck stop and get diesel fuel with the big boys. Because we are so big, we have to go to the trucker's side of truck stops even though there is a car side as well. We are too big. Sparky would say it was an uneventful trip except for one thing...she forgot to lock the fridge. Some residential fridges do not need locks and will stay shut as you rock and roll your permanent home down bumpy highways. Ours does not. Fortunately, nothing broke or spilled because Sparky DOES remember to try and contain things INSIDE the fridge with bins.

We saw LOTS of wind turbines along the way in Iowa. Those things are HUGE! They can be as high as a 20 story building, and the blades 197 feet. One turbine can power up to 1,219 homes. There are a lot of cool facts about wind turbines, but Sparky didn't want to bore you.

A wind turbine going up

One of the cool things Sparky loves about traveling, is you see things that you studied or taught in school. The farmers are using terrace farming to preserve soil erosion. It's one thing to read about it in a book, it's another to actually see examples. 

terracing method of farming in Iowa

It's a 1 night stay in this nice park off of I-80 and interstate 29. The park is called On-Ur-Wa, a clever play on words considering it's in Onawa, Iowa, and you are on your way somewhere. The owners are friendly, the park is neat, and they even offer to pick up your garbage if you don't make it over to the dumpsters in the morning. It's a small park, 44 spaces, but the pull thrus are roomy and there was plenty of room for our RV and big honkin' truck. (Make that a big, honkin' RV as well, reminds Eldo.) It's a Good Sam's park, and the price for one night (9-1-20) was $37.56. 

One of the things we love about RVing full time is the wonderful people you meet. Even if it's for one night. We were sitting outside, and Sparky started up a conversation with the lady next door, and pretty soon we were talking about our travels and the hassles of hitching up. Come to find out, her guy knows a ton about that.  A little while later, they both come over to our site, and we sit and talk until it gets darker couple of hours later. Wonderful people, lots of helpful hints about hitching and unhitching, places to go and visit, where they have been, where we have been, etc. It was wonderful to chat with them and two hours later, we felt as though we had made some new friends. Thank you, Mark and Lynne, for your great advice. We sure hope to cross paths with you again some day. And that's entirely possible, even though readers think, well, that won't happen. You do end up seeing people again, and it seems to work out that way fairly often.

Mark and Lynne recommended we put a strip of painter's tape right down the center of the nose of the Pinnacle, just a little short little piece, so Eldy can see where to line up a little better when backing up, because we think the camera that would help him if it wasn't scratched, is no help at all. So we will try that. Lynne gave Sparky a fly swatter, because Sparky has had it on her WalMart list for a week, and keeps forgetting to buy one! What a lifesaver! We are seeing lots of flies outdoors. But few mosquitoes...yay! We whacked away to our hearts' content to keep the flies at bay.

We loved our one night stay at On-Ur-Wa and highly recommend it as an overnight stop. We heard the park is for sale, we hope someone will buy it and keep it going!

Tonight is a one night stop at the KOA in Mitchell, SD, Mitchell is the home of the Corn Palace. Sparky LOVES the Corn Palace so it's a quickie trip over there this afternoon. We will tell you all about it next time...see you then!