The Arrival

We ended up leaving Wednesday night for a camping vacation in Des Moines. As soon as I got off of work I changed clothes and hopped into the truck. Things started very smoothly. We stopped in Tama for supper and headed off into the sunset towards our much needed vacation spot.

It pretty much turned to crap from there.

About 40 minutes outside of Des Moines it started turning gray and we could see rain in the distance. Thankfully, Larry let us borrow his GPS system so we felt comfortable in that even with reduced visibility we would be able to find our way to the campground.

Ten minutes outside of Des Moines the heavens opened. I mean...God must have been dumping buckets out of his window to make the rain come down that hard. Dustin immediately started to tense up because "Lola" (the GPS lady) had started to announce the merge on to I-80. That interstate seems to be a death trap anyway and given the fact that we had an 8,000 pound weight on our tail and unfavorable weather I completely understood Dustin's hesitation.

We made it on to I-80 and followed "Lola's" directions. We got off on the exit she told us and about that time it started hailing. There we were...stuck in a truck, with a huge camper attached, with two screaming kids, a spastic dog, unable to see anything, getting more and more panicked by the second.

We slowly turned corners and faithfully did as "Lola" said. Just about the time we started to relax "Lola" says, "Turn right in .2 miles" That just about the time the ROAD CLOSED sign appeared. There we were stuck on a two way street, in the middle of no where blocking traffic with this huge piece of machinery behind us.

Dustin hopped out of the truck and ran to the camper to grab our information packet from the campground. In the meantime, people were honking and the hail continued. Finally a Sheriff pulled up to see what the problem was. While Dustin spoke with the Sheriff, I called the campground only to find out that "Lola" was given the wrong address and we were completely on the wrong side of the lake.

A Sheriff escort, a mile long bridge and a mild panic attack later we were at the campground.