Biking, Adventureland, and BOHICA

The past week has brought a real mixed bag of things -- there was some decent weather (but the heat from that just caused more thunderstorms), we were able to spend some time at Adventureland as tourists on Thursday, we evacuated to the local casino Thursday night in the face of more severe thunderstorms, and now this weekend with record setting rain.  BOHICA . . . . .
To clarify -- that's the acronym for Bend Over, Here It Comes Again -- and it unfortunately is a one-word description for the Iowa weather which has impacted our stay here so far. 
Just over the past several days, we had the "perfect storm" weather across the upper Midwest Thursday night, which had us evacuating to the local casino for protection for several hours (fortunately it didn't develop into as fierce a storm as projected, but it still was unnerving).  That night and Friday, Des Moines blew their one-day rainfall record for that date clear out of the water (pun intended!) with rainfall of 4.13 inches.  Saturday was a one day respite, but early Sunday morning the skies opened up again, and I'm sure that records will be set for today.
A few pictures of our fun - although our picture taking has been limited since we don't want to drown our cameras!

Thursday night's evacuation using the casino as a storm shelter  -  since an RV park is a perfect tornado magnet.  We kept track of the storm progress with Bruce's Iphone (look at all the red weather).


Today's (Sunday) view our our front window to our own lake -- and its still coming down.


But we've beat the weather to death, so now some views of some of the fun that we've been able to insert between the rain, thunder and tornados --
Biking . . . . . and carbo-loading --

 

Exploring Adventureland as tourists -- some pictures of the rides and the campground earlier this week to give our readers a better idea of where we're working.  Roll your cursor over each picture for a short description, and click to enlarge . . . . .




We're heading to work today for a 6 hour shift (3 to 9 PM) just about when the next string of thunder showers are projected to start.  Greg's ride (the Outlaw roller-coaster) is under cover, but Mandy's work at the Raging River water ride has her out in the open.   The temperatures are supposed to be in the 70s, so it won't be too uncomfortable, but we've got a lot of Iowans here drowning themselves so we've got to do our Carnie bit.

Who'll stop the rain . . . . . ?

Boy, it just keeps coming and coming.  A day or two of relatively reasonably weather over the weekend, then the rain started again.  We managed to squeeze in a 25 mile bike ride on Wednesday morning, but by the evening, the skies darkened again, the wind started, and a drenching rain came and went most of the night. 
The weather radio alerts came and went for a good portion of the night between 11PM and 3AM.  Tornadoes touched down about 40 miles southwest of Des Moines, but as of this morning limited damage is indicated.  We then tune into the forecast for the next 24 hours and -- apparently due to the anticipated temperatures today heating up to the mid-80s -- the threat for severe thunderstorms (and all that go with it) are even higher tonight that they were last night.
We've got a little sun now, and, although there are mini-lakes of water all around from last night's deluge, we may try to get in a ride this afternoon with Chuck, a fellow workamper and RAGBRAI participant.  Hopefully a good portion of the standing water will evaporate in the heat this afternoon (which of course will start the thunderstorm/severe weather/tornado cycle all over again . . . . . ) and we'll be able to try out a new cycling route along the Des Moines river about 5 miles from here.
Its a good thing that diesel prices are still up there, and we feel compelled by our commitment to the people and our job here, otherwise we'd think seriously about picking up and heading somewhere else for the summer.  This crappy weather just isn't our cup of tea, and it sure isn't helping us get prepared for RAGBRAI.  We keep hearing from everyone here that this weather is highly unusual, but that doesn't do much good when we can't have the summer we anticipated -- I guess we've been spoiled.   But, we'll ride it out here (no pun intended) and will probably look back on it as a character-building experience  . . . . . .how's that for rationalization?
More picture posts will be on the way in a couple of days, since this rain cycle has got to break sometime.

A Gold-plated tour

This week we were pleasantly surprised by a visit from our good friends, Gordon and Mary Sue.  We met them several years ago during our summer campground work near Marble Falls, Texas, and have seen them several times since as our paths crossed.  We had an enjoyable visit with them, Greg helped them with some software for their laptop, and we all took advantage of the $3.50 Tuesday breakfast buffet at the nearby casino. 





The past week has been good, once we got through the heavy storms of last weekend.  The weather is slowly getting better (warmer and drier) and the work at Adventureland is going along well.  We also had our normal day off, and, since it still was a bit rainy that day, we took the opportunity to visit the state capitol building near downtown Des Moines.

Its a wonderful building, and Iowans are justly proud of it.  It is the only 5 domed capitol building in the country.  The main dome is covered by a paper-thin sheet of pure 23 carat gold (it was recently "regilded" at a cost of over a half a million dollars) and it brightens the landscape from miles away. 

Our tour took us through the Governor's office, the Iowa Senate and House of Representatives chambers, and the original courtroom for the Iowa Supreme Court.  The court has moved to a different building, but the original Law Library is still in the capitol -- and it was an amazing room, with four tiers of bookshelves, connected with lots of circular stairways with ornate railings. 

Part of our tour also took us up into the main dome itself, where we could get closer views of the ornate artwork inside the dome itself.

We had an outstanding tour guide, who gave us a 2 hour tour of the significant areas of the building -- and, of course we all took pictures.  Here are some of ours that we thought were the best -- click on any of them to enlarge.





As we're writing this, the rain is unfortunately starting again, after a nice weekend, and the forecast is more of the same for the next couple of days -- although there does not appear to be any of the tornado-spawning variety on the horizon.  The good news is that we start on a new set of rides today -- Mandy will be working the Raging River, and Greg will be on the Outlaw -- one of the two wooden roller-coasters here.