Rising Rivers Road Trip

Couldn't help myself today...had to go on another road trip. My main mission was to see the area where the girl scouts are going to have a ceremony this weekend. Couldn't get there, but we could see the beautiful new water slide playground equipment. The area where they are going to camp out is on high ground, though.

The girls and I then hit the gravel road running parallel to the river, to check things out a bit more. They had a million questions, which I tried to answer, but my patience was wearing thin. We saw evidence of people evacuating and moving all their valuables and vehicles to higher ground.

As we continued on, we drove by these cows. I know the commercials say "Happy Cows come from California". Well, I've never been to California, but I think Iowa cows look pretty happy, too. Big sis was impressed that the cows stopped what they were doing to watch us. Fortunately, there was no one else on the road, as we stopped and took some photos.

We eventually found our way back to the Lake Red Rock area to see what had changed since last night. Most notably, we were unable to drive to the spillway like we did last night. Instead, we parked down stream where we usually watch bald eagles in the winter and walked closer.

As we were walking along the path, we noticed a very tall thistle. Upon closer inspection, we saw a bumblebee enjoying the flowers. Thank goodness for zoom...I wasn't in the mood to get stung trying to get a close-up.

We had the most fun and the best view from the bridge on the hiking trail.

They were releasing considerably more water today than yesterday. Sounds like it going to increase more over the next few days. It's hard to see in this photo, but crews from Musco Lighting were installing lights on the dam. I guess they want to keep tabs on the dam overnight. That would be a cool sight.
The girls enjoyed playing on the playground equipment in the campground area near the spillway. It was a major challenge getting them away from it, but they persevered and managed to get back to the car on their own 4 feet. I surprised them with a stop at Smokey Row in Pella.

Then we made our way home where we met up with Cool Daddy-O to attend a reception for an art show. Big Sis has a picture on a traveling display in our town this summer.