SIOUX CITY IOWA

We spent the day at Pipestone National Park in Minnesota it's a sacred native Indian ground and a beautiful location (I'll post pictures later) . . . . then headed south to Iowa. We wanted to stay another night at our camp and then were contemplating driving up to Minneapolis but when I looked at the map home I couldn't see driving another 5 hours if I didn't need to.
We drove down to Iowa and found a great hotel in Sioux City. The city appeared empty and the hotel was a big 20 stories. We got a room on the 6th floor and for some reason I brought Jacquelyn over and showed her the fire exit . . . I've never done that before. We liked the hotel and were a little concerned about parking the minivan on the street in the city. I didn't like that we had to have the meter fed at 7:00AM. I got up early and stuffed a handful of quarters into the meter and found a cup of coffee. We got things packed up and were almost ready to go at 8:30 and the fire alarm goes off! Never has this happened before. We all stood looking at each other in amazement. Jacquelyn looked panicked that we wouldn't get out in time and Cole looked panicked because he didn't know if he should grab his GoPro camera or his laptop and cell phone and continued to walk between the two! So we go to the very fire stairs that I showed Jacquelyn the night before and we walk quickly down 6 flights. A creepy voice recording stating that there is an emergency in the building and we should quickly get to the fire stairs he kept repeating himself as the alarm was going off and there was a blinding light flashing a beam of light into our eyes every 10 seconds. At one point I laughed and said "are you kidding me?" I grabbed my keys and we all walked down to the lobby, everyone looking at each other not knowing what was happening. We looked across the street and there was a IHOP and Johnny gave us a IHOP gift card so we headed over.

The hotel didn't burn down apparently there was an icemaker overheating so we packed up and headed out of town. The Missouri River WOW! I've seen for months now the flooding in the midwest and the rivers cresting but when you see it for yourself it's amazing. The Missouri River has destroyed land, properties, roads, bridges and everything in it's way. It really takes your breath away. I saw on the news last night that they are now worried about mold problems. It breaks my heart to see what the people have had to go through this year . . . so much worse than my television has brought into my home. I wanted to complain about the fact that the major Interstate from Iowa down to Kansas Interstate 29 was shut down in most places because of the flooding . . . and we had to take these crazy back roads the whole way but I thought after all they've been through here I had no right to complain about a little inconvenience. (that should amaze a few of you)