20 minutes in Atlantic Iowa.











For the third or fourth time in the time – I found that gas stations are plentiful when I am on 3/4 of a tank with the van. Once I get to a quarter tank – the story changes and I drive the van on fumes frantically searching for a gas station. Once past Des Moines – the van was on 1/4 tank and only corn fields for miles. [ Those stereotype images of Iowa are true!]
So – looking at a map I decided it was better to head 6 miles off the highway to Atlantic than 20 more miles on the highway to possibly find no gas at the next stop. So off I went to do a quick tour of Atlantic. Coke a Cola capitol of Iowa. [ I do not know what that actually means…] Before I could get into Atlantic – I had to wait for this non-moving train to actually move.











Atlantic looks like a nice town situated on old route 6 – that just got bypassed by route 80. You would never know about it unless you got off the highway. After gassing up – I decided to take old route 6 into Council Bluffs / Omaha instead of going back to the highway.

At first a neat drive.




















I paralleled a lightning /thunderstorm most of the way and took a few photos. It was literally a mix of Close Encounters / Wizard of OZ landscape.





















The novelty wore off as the route made a turn right into the storm path as the sun finally went down. So I had complete darkness lit up every few seconds by a lightning strike with heavy rain, so so wipers and a windshield full of bug smear. Visability went to Zero every time a car passed by me. Novelty ended quickly. Things improved as I drove into Council Bluffs/ Omaha. I located a KOA on the west side of Omaha and called it a night. Tomorrow I will wait for some more VW people to catch up so we can caravan.

64 minutes in Iowa City.











I had heard a bit about Iowa city being a fun college town. So I figured I would stop in for lunch and do a quick look about. They have a nice pedestrian mall downtown that I strolled a bit after lunch. The place reminded me a lot of Ithaca actually.

Visit with the Quinn family









After a later start [ 6:30 am] from Syracuse, along with a stop in Rochester – I finally got on the road to head west. After spending the day driving on route 90 through Ohio and Indiana, I headed to Elmhurst Ill to visit my cousin Kelly and her family. Her son Sean was born last September and I had not yet met him. So I promised to do my best Uncle over stimulation mode to compensate. We spent Wednesday touring Elmhurst, with stops at the Farmers market and the new pool. Stan, Kelly, Sean and I went to dinner at a local Irish pub for dinner. Irish Soda bread and Guinness Pie. Yummy! Kelly also got a chance to show me baby Pilate's. Wednesday night, Kelly and Stan helped me prepare the cobbler mixes for my week at Burning Man as I told them more about what I expected to see at the festival.
































I headed out of Illinois around 9:30 and got a fitful start. Soon after I got on Route 80 – I spotted a sign for the J.C. Whitney Outlet. JC Whitney is a cheesy auto parts catalog company based in Chicago. I spent many hours when I was younger – looking through their catalog at Lite UP Skulls, fuzzy dice and other great upgrades for my VW’s.










[they actually had some OK VW parts as well….] So I HAD to stop. And I picked up some lite up valve stems for my bike and a solar panel for Chilipepper.





















Illinois took longer than I expected to get through and I crossed over into Iowa in the early afternoon in a rainstorm. It was a very hot and humid day to drive. But on the upswing – I made a Burning man poster to put in the window of the van for the trip. And I got the honk from and Art Ark [ from Boston?] and passed a giant black school bus with flames painted on it also headed to Burning Man. Fun!

Illumination Weekend Part One












This weekend was our annual big Illumination Weekend campout. Many of the gay camp grounds host an illumination weekend. We started going to the one at Hillside back in 2001. Every year we went back - our group got a little bigger and soon we also started going to the Jones Pond Illumination Weekend as well.
















As it so happens - it is also the double birthday for Eric and my old roommate Gabe. So after dropping off a cake with Gabe on Friday afternoon, I headed down to meet everyone at Jones Pond to set up camp for the weekend. Saturday we had a Greek style dinner and followed up with cake and homemade raspberry ice cream for Eric's birthday.

Last year's camp out got rained out and was quite "wet" We ended up abandoning ship on Saturday afternoon, missing the illumination competition :O( So we were back in force this year at Jones Pond. Here is our group getting the balloons ready after dinner.























We took an idea we started at Hillside 2 years ago with disposable LEDs Eric located on the internet and placed 60+ balloons around the campsite at various heights of 15 - 50 feet. The effect after dark was quite dramatic. Here are some still shots along with a couple of videos.
The slide show was prepared by our friend Bill DeGroote.