White Lions B&B

Kayla, Hank and Mark

Hank (so Regal)

Hank sure loves his Mum

It rained!

Bike night in Winterset

Bike night in Winterset – no helmets here!

A Harley Davidson

Bike night

A ‘Victory’ bike

We had to say goodbye today to our lovely hosts, Kayla, Mark and Hank as it was time to move on. We’ve had such a wonderful time here at the White Lions B&B and hope to return one day. Kayla and Mark gave us ‘going away’ presents, two Madison County t-shirts. Every time we wear them they will stand as a reminder of the lovely people we met and the super time we had here.

Winterset is truly a treasure and if any of you find yourselves this way then make sure to visit and of course, stay with Kayla and Mark. You just have to sample Kayla’s cooking.

Every third Saturday of the month a ‘bike night’ is held in the town square and last night was that night. The square was full to overflowing with ‘bikers’ who had come from far and wide to meet up, have a drink and listen to music. The range of bikes was truly amazing.

Today started cooler at 64ºF (17ºC) and just before we left the B&B we had a thunder storm with torrential rain. We hadn’t seen rain like that in a long long time. The rain followed us on our way to Le Claire but it’s now sunny and 84ºF (28ºC) so a tad warmer.

Iowa is a very pretty state, it’s lush and green and most of the crops grown here would appear to be corn.

Alas, our first impressions of Le Claire were tainted by the fact that when we checked into our ‘non-smoking’ hotel room, someone had in fact …………… been smoking!!! Our hotel overlooks the Mississippi River and we were on the third floor with a balcony, so the view of the river was lovely. Unfortunately, because we asked to change rooms due to the smell, the only one available was on the ground floor. We are still overlooking the river but the view is not quite so grand but we do have a small patio area.

The next thing we are ‘miffed’ about is Beast 2!! You remember I told you how we went into the Alamo rental facility on Wednesday and they told us we didn’t need to swop the car in? Well, on the way to Le Claire today a warning light came on telling us to ‘change the oil soon’. You can imagine what was said when that appeared. So, this evening we discovered there was a small airport just sixteen miles from the hotel that had an Alamo facility. We went along all ready for a big fight but we were greeted by two of the nicest ladies and they said they could swop the car over very easily and they even had another Ford Edge in dark blue. It turns out that the one they gave us is more highly-speced than the one we returned and is a limited edition. It has a leather interior and if the weather should suddeny turn cold, it has heated seats!!

There is just one other thing to report. Those of you who have been following the blog from the beginning of our trip will know that it soon became apparent very early on, that we would need to purchase a third suitcase as we were running out of space. Well, today we purchased the fourth!! Enough said I think!!

Tomorrow we will visit our own field of corn that grows along the side of a baseball field …. the one from the film ‘Field of Dreams’. I wonder who we will see appearing out of the corn!!