We made it into Iowa. We are spending the night at a city park in Casey, IA, about 50 miles west of Des Moines and only a couple of miles off I-80. It is a classic small town city park with playgrounds and a covered pavilion. It also has a few electric RV sites in a grassy loop, most with lovely old shade trees. The sites are very unlevel, but the price is definitely right at only $10! We stayed here before, but I can’t remember when. Looking it up in my old paper trip journal is too painful, one of the reasons I prefer the current electronic version.
The animals have been interesting on this trip. Minou, our older black cat, is calm and collected. Nothing much bothers her. We put her in the truck, she comes for some petting, and then she goes to sleep in one of the cat towers in the back seat. Lily, the calico cat is definitely an Anxious Annie. She gets all wound up and starts crying when anything changes. Slow down? Rough road? Lots of curves? Out she comes screaming! She also wanders all over the truck. Eventually she will go to sleep under the passenger seat or I one of the cat towers (but not the one Minou is in). Lexi, the dog, is very mellow. She is older too (12) and she just goes with the flow. She mostly just sleeps on the back seat, but occasionally something will be interesting enough to make her sit up.
Inside the trailer we have an adjustable pet gate with a tiny door for the cats to move through. It lets the cats have their food available without Lexi getting into it. We take it down when we travel.
Other than the hassle with the pet gate, traveling with Lexi added to the menagerie isn’t too bad. She sure does leave a lot of hair clumps though. When we get to our campsite in Marion we are going to have to sweep and vacuum, something I normally don’t get too worried about. The trailer is really a mess though with clumps of black dog hair all over the small amount of carpeting we have. The rest of the dog hair is in the corners of the vinyl flooring!
We have also been listening to audiobooks on this trip. So far we have done two by Faye Kellermann. This last one had a back story about diamond merchants so I think I will pull out my Dick Francis audiobook that is also about gem sellers for our next book.