The floods are receeding in Iowa . . .

Well it hasn't been a week since we left and we said that we would avoid flood-ravaged Southeast Iowa but once we got to Oskaloosa we started getting the "local" news which sounded a bit more positive than the national news. Yesterday, a quick call to the Amana Colonies RV Park revealed they were okay and welcomed us to the park. We simply had to avoid one short highway and slow down where part of the detoured road had been washed away. The moral of the story is that this is the MIDWEST. People here take it on the chin, pick themselves up and help each other recover.

We arrived on Tuesday and are parked in a facility that houses on average, about 200 campers; there may be only about 20 motorhomes as we record this. A quick trip into Amana proved that all the shops were open and we were welcomed with open arms. Only a handful of people were visiting the shops so we probably spent a little more than we would normally would have.


One more piece of heartwarming evidence that this is a hard-working community: There is a Whirlpool Refrigeration Plant (used to be Amana) in Middle Amana on the Iowa River that now looks like it is surrounded by a moat (which used to be for employee parking). The employees work in three shifts and are parked on the road bordering the RV Park. Each shift has a specific parking area so that school buses know where to go pick up the next shift of workers. I took pictures of both the Whirlpool Plant and the parking situation. If you look closely, you can see the almost empty RV park in the background. It may not look like much, but we were so relieved to find happy people who weren't expecting to be pitied; just working hard to recover!


We had another interesting event today - in West Branch, Iowa, but we will save that for another post. Have a good rest of the week!