It's not where you go, it's who you're with

You probably remember reading about our great adventure last spring, and if you are our friends on Facebook you have probably already seen that we continued our tradition this year although we were missing one. 

Yes, while traditional college kids were heading south to avoid Mother Nature’s cold attitude last weekend, my crew and I hung back and spent part of our (not so) “spring” break around Iowa.  

We headed northwest late Friday afternoon and spent most of the drive catching up, listening to ISU play TCU in the Big XII Semifinals and searching for hotels to set up camp at. Price and reviews didn’t matter to Jared, as long as they had a good, free breakfast. We decided on the Hampton Inn and Suites in Sioux City. We knew we had a big day ahead of us, so we crashed pretty early. Jared insisted on being the first one at breakfast, which started at 6 a.m., so he didn’t miss out on the good stuff. 

He succeeded. His alarm went off at 5:50 a.m. and he was up, showered and downstairs by shortly after 6 I’m sure, as I rolled over and fell back asleep. Eventually, the rest of us got moving and made our way to our first stop, Stone State Park where we climbed hills in relation to the Loess Hills we climbed last spring. We didn’t break a sweat this year, however, nothing has changed as far as me not being able to keep up with the group. Following our hike, we ventured into South Dakota as Don Kieffer, Kara’s uncle, invited us to his family’s home in Dakota Dunes for lunch. What kind of college kids would we be if we didn’t accept a free home cooked meal? We enjoyed the laughs and getting to know them. 

With full stomachs we were back in Iowa and visited the Louis and Clark Interpretive Center, a beautiful building filled with amazing, detailed exhibits describing their journey. Kara and I spoke with the husband of the activities director there and it was so obvious how much he loved sharing his knowledge with everyone he met. That makes such a big difference for places like this.  We decided to walk down on the sandbar (more like mud bar) of the Missouri River where Kara finally got her picture taken with this bridge that crosses it that she found absolutely fascinating. She was born to be an engineer I think we could all agree! Oh Kara, she really keeps it interesting. Immediately after, we stopped at the Sergeant Floyd Monument, the burial place of Sergeant Charles Floyd who was a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. That was pretty cool for us to see after remembering we wrote papers about the Sergeant in 5th Grade Social Studies.

Read more on the story in the March 22 issue of The Ogden Reporter.

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