Monday, August 1, 2011

Too hot in KC!

There was this motor home sitting quietly out at our curb...........  It was all clean and nothing was broken.  It was full of fuel.....  It was to be beastly hot again in Kansas City, and for about the tenth time we heard that the hottest day of the year will be on Tuesday.....

Tonight we are at the On Ur Wa camp ground in Onawa, Iowa.  We are 296 miles away from our home in KC, on the way we had to get here.  Remember that the there were record snows in North Dakota last winter and that flood water has been coming down the Missouri river ever since.

Interstate 29 is covered with this water in several locations.  Several roads including I 29 are under in the Nebraska City area.  And right at Eppley Air Field in Omaha the river has covered I 29 and I 680 again.  And most of Carter Lake Iowa has to be flooded too because it is so low in that area.  Carter Lake is on the West side of the river but it is still Iowa because years ago the river took a new channel.  But that is another story......

Anyway we are headed North and West to try and get away from some of this brutal heat.  So how did we do?  Well not so well, because it was 97 in KC when we left and we had temps in the high 90s all the way up here.  Sometimes out it the country it was 92 or 93 but for the most part hot was the mantra of the day.

We ran the generator and both roof ACs as well as the dash AC.  In the afternoon, it wasn't particularly cool inside the coach either.  We stopped in Shenandoah, Iowa at a strip mall with a McDonalds and took a break for a while.  I got a burger and Loyce ate here salad that was in the fridge.

The old highways that we detoured the flood on were rather broken up and shocked and jarred everything in the coach, until we made Interstate 80 at Avoca, Iowa.  Even the interstate is not that good, because much of it was under water at some time this spring.  When we topped the hill on I 680 looking over the Missouri River valley it was water for as far as we could see to the South towards Omaha.  Of course the road was blocked so going back towards Omaha wasn't an option.

One of the blogs that I regularly read The Wanderings of  Emrys, had Jim and Linda returning to South Dakota for renewal of their drivers licenses. They stayed here in Onawa on their return trip back to Illinois, and reported this to be a comfortable park.  And it is, although they have had some flooding from the river too, and asked if I would put some big plywood squares under my jacks so they don't punch thru the dry top of the land and cause a well to form because the ground is so soaked with river water.

I did see that the river is receding on the news tonight so perhaps they can open I 29 here in the near future.  We watched the weather, and it is to be hot all the way up into the Dakotas this week, so we may get a lot of genny time while we are on the road.

We have absolutely no plans made or reservations booked, this is a completely spontaneous trip, so we wonder how that will work out for us.  Perhaps Wal Mart parking lots will be or resort of choice......... Do you think

Retired Rod

7 comments:

  1. At least you got to make a break for it. I am planning on heading for the Lake Wed. and staying until Monday. It is till supposed to be in the lower 90's but we can live with that and it has been getting down to about 78 at night.Have fun on you trip. Be safe out there. Sam & Donna....

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  2. For cooler air I think maybe you had better set your sights on Alaska.

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  3. You will have to get quite a ways West of the Missouri River and North to find any relief from the heat. The last half of July and the first half of Aug is usually the hottest part of the year throughout the midwest, but especially East of the Missouri.......It was 91 here in the Black Hills yesterday... Little more humidity than usual, but not bad and it only lasted for a few hours... good luck in finding some relief. but don't expect to much, plus we have a lot of afternoon thunderstorms... Soon it will be Fall !! I love that!!

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  4. The weather here in the Pacific Northwest is springlike - sunny days mixed with cloudy ones. Sun in the forecast for the next several days, with highs in the upper 60's! We run our little electric heater in the morning to take the chill off. We've been in Oregon and Washington all summer, and find it so hard to believe what we hear on the news about the temps in most of the country!

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  5. Just getting away makes it so much easier to handle the weather. Don't forget about Cracker Barrel or Cabela's for other resort choices.

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  6. The weather gods are meant to annoy us. As bad as the oppressive heat is now, in just a few more months you'll be thinking about putting pink stuff in your MH's water lines! We can't win!

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  7. It continues to be 101 plus every day in Fayetteville, AR (NWA). This is the hottest summer in history and we still have August to go through. Very unusual weather across the country, for sure. It is 108 in Little Rock, AR today.

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