2017 08 20-21 Road Trip: 8/20 sold car in La Crosse, Wisconsin, 08/21 eclipse near Loveland, Iowa

Road Trip in our new Truck.

August 20: Carol drove the Camry and Bob followed her in the new truck across I90 to La Crosse, WI.  Our goal was to meet up with Carol's friend, Donna and her husband, Bill.  The purpose was to sell Donna the Camry. We owned that car since 2006 and had put only 105k miles on it. Once that was done we all had lunch then, while Donna and Bill returned to Conover, WI we drove to Ames, Iowa to spend the night. We were already getting a lot of traffic and we suspected some of it was heading south for the great 2017 eclipse event. 

Our little ones safely harnessed into their seats. They seem to have resigned themselves to the change in transportation but are still getting conditioned to the extreme height of that jump to get in.

August 21:  We got up early to headed down I35 toward St. Joseph, Mo to see the total eclipse. The traffic just south of Des Moines, Iowa was sooo Bad.  "How bad was it?"  It was so bad, we were zooming along at about 4 MPH.  This went on for almost 16 miles. Did we mention that it was also raining heavily. AND one out of two lanes were under construction. We must say this about Iowa drivers...they are very polite. They did not wait until the lane actually ran out to move over. They did not blow past cars waiting in the closing lane on the shoulder. And they did not go blasting past all the cars that had already moved over. Impressive, Iowans. AND, they even have a sense of humor. As we were driving the Highway Department digital signs kept saying traffic was slow and heavy. Then we saw one that said, "Put down your phone or we will turn off the sun." Priceless! We did try to keep our spirits up and see the bight side of continuing the long drive with thoughts of spectacular views of the sun's corona during the totality but the ongoing red line on Google Maps showing our progress and future navigation finally got to us. We bailed at the first open exit sign (even though it really didn't look like we should be there but no cops tried to stop us) and headed back North towards Des Moines. We hopped on I80 and headed west.   We stopped at a rest area just before Loveland, Iowa and noticed several people preparing for their eclipse watch. While we had not planned to stop for the eclipse, we thought, "What the heck? Why not." To our surprise we actually got to see a 95% eclipse, which isn't too bad. The sun lost all it's power to keep the temperatures up and we lost about 20 degrees to the mid-60s but the darkness that full totality places had just did not happen. It was like a cloud cover and even caused the street lights to turn on. Here are some pictures of our adventure. 

Can't say if these two have anything to do with eclipse fever, but we certainly have not experienced a pair of walking alligator suits on any other occasions when we stopped in a Rest Area.  

Seemed somewhat out of place in Iowa to us.

Bob is wearing his Safety Eclipse Glasses but Carol is not making the mistake of flouting the cardinal rule of eclipse watching. She is looking at the camera.

Safety first. Wearing proper eye protection while waiting for "darkness at noon". Well, technically, it was just after 1 pm since we were in Iowa.

Nice view and the farmland is pretty too. 

It was really windy. Don't lose your hat Carol. 

It got dark enough for the street
lights to come on at the rest area. 

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Well it's time to go.
Maybe I can peek at the eclipse while driving.
But, Carol said NO! and kicked me out.

Hands aren't at 10 and 2. More like 9:30 and 1, but still firmly holding the wheel. Bob did get to drive again later when we re-enter South Dakota and the speed limit went up to 80 and the rain started up again.