“Anyway I figured I didn't have to pay attention. The guidebook tells you what you gotta do.”

Voyagers! - Episode 1 

When last I Chronicled, a trip to Valentine was in the wind. But you know how these things go... the wind shifted, and started blowing east instead of west, straight into Clear Lake, IA. It had everything to do with the book “Iowa - Off the Beaten Path”. The “Off the Beaten Path” series of books has become an invaluable resource for me – having nearly exhausted the Nebraska one, I purchased Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri. That should keep me busy for a while!

So the geodad, Sioncat, and I headed east by northeast, on a leisurely four day Father's Day trip. Because it was Father's Day weekend, this Chronicle will be cache-light, but picture heavy. You have been warned! It wasn't until it was far too late to turn back that we discovered we had a stowaway... the geokitty had snuck a friend along! I guess she was trying to make a point or something.

 

                     That didn't make me nervous, though.                             But this did.

                                     

 Along the way to Clear Lake on Friday, I did manage to find “Where the Tall Corn Grows”, some “Grounds for Fairness”, and that I should “Always be on Guard”. Just another part of “A Growing Tradition”! Plus others, of course.

 We set up camp fairly late, so not much was done after we arrived that first night. Next day promised to be full of fun though – the guidebook listed many fun things to do nearby!

“Which came first, the chicken or the cone?”

 Of course, we needed breakfast the next morning, but what is breakfast without a bit of philosophy? After we achieved a state of donutness at a nearby Daylight Donuts, then we set out to try to answer an age-old question. As a bonus, Dad made a new friend!

  

 Then we moved on to try to find a nearby cache in a park, but were unsuccessful – all we found were a lot of mosquitoes, and a person pitching horseshoes who gave us a few curious looks as we searched the wall.

 Clear Lake is a very beautiful town, tucked around the curve of the lake; it reminded me very much of Burlington, VT save for the lack of mountains. There was also no organized bus system that I saw, but Dad and I found some alternate forms of transportation in the surrounding area.

                                                                                                                     

The visit to the Rail Museum was great fun; we got to help operate the handcar for a brief trip. They have been working for over 10 years there to put together a steam locomotive from parts gathered from all over the country, which was definitely something we'd never seen before. The geodad got to ask a lot of questions. He liked that! We'll get to the stone bikes soon...

 “Uh... it's... it's a brachiopod!”

Jurassic Park (sort of)

 Next on the agenda was an earthcache about 20-30 miles east of Clear Lake, at a site where you can hunt for – and KEEP – your own fossils! The Fossil & Prairie Park is one of the few places in the US that will let you do that. Granted, the fossils are mostly of clam-sized shellfish, but it's still really cool. They ask you there not to get too greedy, so we only found about 6 or 7. Some people were carrying empty buckets in – that was crazy.

 I was ill-prepared for this though, and ended up having to use my camera case to hold the fossils, which led to the question of where do we put the camera? It ended up in his pocket when I wasn't holding it! But a lot of the time I WAS, because the scenery there reminded me of the Grand Canyon on a miniature scale. All erosioned landscaping, water-shaped.

 

       

 On the way back – and we stayed there several hours – we passed through Mason City, IA. I tried to find some caches there, without much luck. Then I went after one called Ecletic Zen... no, I didn't find that cache either. I forgot to look for it. The location was - oh, I don't know how to describe it. This is where the stone bike was. Have some more pictures.            

 The whole place was like that. Everyday objects in weird locations and arrangements. Flying bikes. Every kind of imaginable sign. It's not very large, but we spent a lot of time just goggling! One man put it all together, too, if I remember correctly! Is it any wonder I forgot to even look for the cache?

 

 “I told you they was organised. ”

Chicken Run

 MEOW! CROAK! HAHAHAHA!

 Sioncat and the Blue-Spotted Frog (BSF), conquering the world, one bottle of chocolate wine at a time! Hangovers and all. We should have known better than to leave them alone in the tent all day with the wine. We'd found a wine shop while windowshopping, and I just couldn't resist buying.

 

  

 The next day was Father's Day – I had promised the geodad a cruise and a cache-free day, and I delivered! The Lady of the Lake is a good-sized boat that does 75 minute cruises on Clear Lake – for Father's Day, they have a special one that includes live music and a BBQ lunch on the lower level, plus door prizes for dads. We both really enjoyed it – again, it was very reminiscent of the ferry that runs from Burlington VT to Plattsburgh NY. Shades of my childhood!

     It was so GOOD to be out on the water again!      And in the afternoon, we had an amazing time.        

        

 

Later, near sunset along the shores of Clear Lake, the geocat did some tree climbing, but couldn't get back down. As she sat there, yowling her head off, the B.S.F. tried valiantly to get up to her, but could not. Luckily, help was close at hand!

                          

             

 The crisis over, we stayed to catch the sunset.

 

 

A very successful Father's Day weekend!

 I'd also taken Monday off, to let us head home that day. By pre-arrangement, Monday was going to be my cache-heavy day, to try to reach that 2000 goal, and I did manage to find a lot of caches in Ames and Boone, IA. It was a hot day, though, and hunger combined with low blood sugar drove us into the best BBQ place in Iowa for lunch – oh, no. Drat. Darn. Pass the napkins!

 “Once again, the L.A.P.D. is asking Los Angelenos not to fire their guns at the visitor spacecraft. You may inadvertently trigger an interstellar war.”

Independence Day

 Severe storms were predicted for that afternoon, so I cut off caching about 3 PM and started for home. We ran into a bad rainstorm outside Carroll, IA, that forced me to pull over for 10 min. and wait it out – I couldn't see the road. I wanted to stay off the interstate as much as possible, but all the flooding around the area has made I-80 pretty much the only access point from Iowa back into Nebraska. It was about 6:30 – 7 pm when I approached Council Bluffs, regrettably from the interstate.

 I could see the sweep and curve of a supercell T-storm from about 15 miles out, but there was nothing I could do. It looked like the mothership out of Independence Day, seriously. There were no exits and nowhere to pull over; I had to keep going, right into it. I've never been so terrified in a storm. Once inside the curve, the clouds were pitch black, scudding, and swirling. I expected it to drop a tornado, but all we got was the torrential rain. Crossing the Missouri River bridge, I couldn't see the lines in the road, or five feet in front of me, and I was panicking. Dad managed to keep me calm enough to drive and be my extra eyes to find the lane markers, and somehow we made it home... the cell dropped a couple tornadoes around the area, I heard later. I wasn't surprised. Just frustrated that I couldn't get any pictures of what I saw, but I was too busy trying to stay alive!

 

THAT wasn't in the guidebook...

 

… until next Chronicle, Cheers, and happy caching!

By Sioneva

 

 

 

 A strangelet is a hypothetical object consisting of a bound state of roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks. An equivalent description is that a strangelet is a small fragment of strange matter. The term "strangelet" originates with E. Farhi and R. Jaffe. Strangelets have been suggested as a dark matter candidate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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