25 May – Lazy Acres RV Park, Urbana, IA

Surprisingly we both slept well last night and didn’t stay awake with anticipation of the monumental trip ahead of us. Of course, that could have been because we had hardly slept at all the night before. The problem the night before was that Harry had a severe reaction to the flea and tic treatment we had gotten from the vet. We don’t know if it burned his skin or not, but it definitely caused him to hyperventilate and become extremely anxious. He couldn’t lay still, his legs jerked and he was constantly twisting and turning, all the while panting like he was burning up. We each slept probably less than two hours all night. I (Karen) took him to the vet Thursday morning and he had to get an IV with Prednisolone, we are giving him Benedryl and will start with Prednisolone tablets on Saturday. He is much, much better! This morning as we were doing our final loading and getting ready to get hooked up, Larry asked me if I smelled something bad around the back of the trailer. After a little investigation, we found a bird’s nest built up under the back end of the camper. Larry got down under and with gloves, started pulling out the nest. He pulled out a half bushel of sticks, grass, leaves and three dead baby birds. Apparently birds had built a nest while the trailer was in storage, then we brought the trailer home and the birds lived a few days before we noticed the smell this morning. Yuck! We drove away from home a little before 9:00 with it getting pretty warm at about 82 degrees. We are now at Urbana, Iowa, close to Cedar Rapids and it is somewhat cloudy and drizzling a little and temp at 66 degrees. We’ll go on to Lora’s tomorrow morning (about 4 hours).