Surprise Visit and Quest for Internet

Today, after the predicted torrential rains all last night, we pulled up stakes (figuratively) and drove across the Mississippi into Iowa again, heading west. Some of the campsites were more affected by all the rain than others--ours was not so bad and we had been alerted to the wet forecast, so fortunately we'd put everything away last night.

We had also been alerted to the fact that we would be driving right past our friend, and former Oriskanite, Nathan Cox's place of employment in Coralville, IA, a suburb of Iowa City, where he and his wife Ann live. (We were alerted by his mom, Ninette Cox, who is a faithful blog reader.) Nathan is assistant manager at West Music in Coralville, so we found the address and put it into our GPS. Sure enough it was easy to find and it was good to see Nathan's smiling face again. He looks great--very fit and healthy! He gave us an informative tour of the store.

The West Music store is much, much larger than it appears in this photo.

Calling West Music a "music store" is a vast understatement, sort of like calling New York City a sleepy little town. It's a very impressive and sizable company. This place is huge, and is only one of multiple stores, although we gathered that it's their flagship. We were stunned at the quantity and quality of seemingly EVERY kind of musical instrument imaginable. A whole roomful of Steinway pianos! A whole roomful of fabulous guitars! Walls full of wind instruments, violins, violas, cellos... yes, and even banjos! Ukeleles! Drums! They give lessons in every kind of musical instrument, do repairs, do custom instrument design, and even have an acoustically excellent performance room in the store that will seat 100. Nathan seems to really like his work and we know the company appreciates him and his expertise. (We remember when Nathan and his brother Jonathan were devoted "band kids" during high school.) It was a treat getting to visit and see him in his element! Thanks for the suggestion, Ninette.

Nathan gave us a nice tour,

starting with the numerous (some costing $100,000 plus) Steinway pianos.

And let's not forget Nathan's cubby hole full of $6,000 cellos and much more,

Another perk to the Coralville stop was Hurt's Donuts right across the street from West Music. What an assortment! We ended up with a giant cinnamon roll and a standard glazed. Yum. The coffee was good too.

Then, back on the road, enjoying the Big Sky, roiling cloudy skyscape, and endless huge farms of corn and soybeans, one after another. The farms all look very prosperous, with lovely older houses in good repair, surrounded by barns and other outbuildings. They all appear to be about a half mile away from each other--about the distance we think people should live from each other for optimum mental health!

Iowa has plenty of rest stops and we  noticed on the signs that they offer Wifi and free dump stations for RVers. Jack has been in search of a good free Wifi connection to do some operating system upgrades to our four Apple devices, so we stopped at a rest stop. However, the connection speed wasn't good enough to do what he wanted to do. We think the state offers the Wifi so as to help keep people from driving and texting--the connection is certainly good enough for texting if not internet surfing. We drove on to a Pilot station and found a great internet connection in their parking lot, and the gas is still under $2!

Perhaps Iowa's way of keeping people from killing themselves texting while driving?

We're now staying at a KOA so Carol can do some laundry...