Iowa ......Gotta Love It !!

By Mary

It is now noon and we are fifty miles West of Des Moines, IA . Gotta love Iowa for their considerate installation of WI-FI at their rest stops!! Because of that we are able to post this blog today.

We pulled out of Rawlins, WY at 8 AM yesterday and landed in Kearney NE at 5:30 PM. It was a long 463 mile day. We pulled off I80 Exit 272 to go to an RV Park only to learn it had gone out of business….so we ended up “boon docking” at The Great Platte River Road Archway Monument. There is a LOT of flies at The Great Platte River Road Archway Monument and most of them seemed to find their way into the camper….we are not used to flies since there isn’t any at Lake Tahoe, but I did manage to find my flyswatter. I should be thankful that the only thing I have to complain about is flies considering the tire blow out we had the day before. That was bad but could have been much worse!!

While traveling across Wyoming we had our usual butte, mesa, or plateau discussion. We can never decide which the formations we see from the road are called. You will soon understand our confusion.
Definitions per my dictionary:Butte: an isolated hill or mountain with steep or precipitous sides usually having a smaller summit area than a mesa.Mesa: an isolated relatively flat-topped natural elevation usually more extensive than a butte and less extensive than a plateau.Plateau: a usually extensive land area having a relatively level surface raised sharply above adjacent land on at least one side.So we decided to settle this question once and for all…at least for us. When we are in Wyoming and see these formations, they are buttes….because Wyoming is a big cowboy state and we feel butte sounds more cowboy-ish.Mesas are in Arizona because it is a more Southwestern sounding word. Plateaus are everyplace else…..especially Texas because everything is bigger in Texas!

Today’s goal is to make it home which may be iffy because it is 575 miles and that is a lot for us in one day.