Iowa Trip, Day Three
Around midnight the clouds march in like silent giants before letting loose with thunder that rolls all night. We sleep with the windows open and the storm seems tentative. Flashes fill the sky, but their reports are weak, muffled by distance. It's nothing like the Atlanta thunderstorm back in June.
Come morning, I'm a bit groggy as I walk across the gravel drive to the other part of the hotel, avoiding puddles as the rain pelts. J.P. is up early, too, and we drive into downtown -- about a mile away -- for our morning coffee fix. He's a slave to Starbucks like I am, but we find an adequate substitute at Cabin Coffee Co. The rain makes my sandals slippery and it's colder than I had planned for.
We arrive back at the hotel just as everyone else is loading up to go have a proper breakfast. It's raining hard now as we drive across to the PM Marina, where the locals smile and stare as we file in and keep coming until we're more than 25 strong. In a perfect redux of the Home Alone movies, everyone has forgotten Uncle Ack, the family patriarch, back at the hotel. Someone goes to fetch him, and when he arrives he takes it like a great sport and soon it's the joke of the day.
The rain bites. There's no way around it. Luckily there's a small (really small) indoor pool that keeps the girls occupied. I'm beginning to get a little bored, however, but keep it to myself. Luckily the afternoon arrives with the storm tapering and we take a ride on the Lady Of The Lake (or as it's more commonly known by the locals, the "whore of the shore"). It's a paddlewheel boat that slowing plows the waters around the lake. Another hour killed.
Later we pass by the Surf Ballroom, where the course of American music changed forever on February 2, 1959. After playing what would turn out to be their final concert, Buddy Holly, J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, and Ritchie Valens boarded a small plane that crashed in a field shortly after takeoff, killing them all.
The rain lets up and Sydney and I make a run for it, hiding in a nearby cornfield where we get in touch with what 1,000 square miles of cornfields look like up close. It's pretty impressive, if you stop to think about it.
Finally, we head over to Paradise Parties ("now with four theme rooms") for the family reunion proper. Everyone makes speeches. The drinks are cheap but powerful. The soundtrack is totally 1980s. Sydney and Hannah drag me onto the dance floor. Despite how it sounds, it actually turns out okay. They are a pretty cool family.
What the morning brings: rain and wind and the dull rumble of distant thunder.
Part of the clan after cruising on the whore of the shore.
The historic Surf Ballroom, where Buddy Holly played his final show on the night the music died.
More wind turbines rise above the corn -- a welcome sight and a nice break of an otherwise monotonous horizon.
Child of the corn.
Lots and lots of lots and lots.
A closeup by Sydney.
All the family together at Party Paradise.
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