Spring has come early to Iowa this year.  The Pella Tulip time won’t be until May 3 but most of the tulips will be dead by then.  Since we were in Pella to buy supplies for our yard, we stopped long enough to see the tulips on April 21.  We only took photos of flowers that still were in good shape although about 1/3 of them were already gone.

This little girl's parents were taking her photo in her Dutch dress with the tulips before they were gone. 

Marla, my sister-in-law took a photo of my tulips with her camera before we left AZ but I thought that we had plenty of time to photograph them when we arrived on April 13. As you know the hailstorm of April 14 did extensive damage to our house.  The tulips by the mailbox looked like this one day after the storm. 

NB to IA - storm

                       

        

Continuing with our journey, we photographed these silos in Nebraska and the windmills that have been added in the last year or two in Adair County in Iowa.  We missed being snowbound in New Mexico and the six inches of snow south of Denver in the area we picnicked in a week ago.  The weather was foggy in Nebraska and it rained overnight while we were camped but we made it home without any trouble.

Home looked so good to us. Most of my tulips had already bloomed. I pulled weeds and planted the iris that my friend Saundra gave me.

Nothing was damaged or destroyed in the winter months.  There wasn’t even dust on the furniture BUT  thirty hours later we had a hail and thunderstorm that tore up siding, broke a window and screen, and damaged our roof.  Our RV bra or mask was pitted, the clearance lights were broken, and the air conditioning covers were broken. All my flowers were now 1 inch high.

We were blessed that no one was hurt. We are also blessed that we can be with family.  These are photos of my newest great grandson, Carter, who was just a few days shy of three months old when we took these photos.

If you want to enlarge these photos, click on the lower left side of photo to see all the pics then click on the ones you want to enlarge.

  

From AZ to CO

 Nine days ago we left the rocks and cacti of Arizona to go visit friends in Colorado and then travel on to Iowa. The weather was fine through Gallup, New Mexico where our friends were snowbound a few days later.

          We saw the passenger train that travels from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, New Mexico and back again.

 It was so good to see the green green grass of Colorado and visit with Rex and Saundra.They showed us a carving on the side of a rocky hill where it said that "Morial Conrad Moschel pioneer massacred by Indians August 21, 1834." A monument below, put there by his children, said that he was 30 years old. 

 

I think that this is Pikes Peak.  The photo was taken from the highway  near Castle Rock.

We had a picnic near the Platte river with Rex and Saundra.  This is the South Platte because the North Platte flows from Nebraska to Wyoming. I'm standing on the Gudy Gaskill Bridge. 

 

Terry liked the little mine which is shown in the upper right of this photo. This ARGO mine reminded him of the restored Kennacott mine in Alaska where we  spent a couple of days.