We are set up at the Cedar View Campground in Nashua, Iowa. We moved here yesterday, May 13, and are visiting friends and relatives, leaving Friday. Nashua is located on the Cedar River and has two "claims to fame"--Cedar Lake and the Little Brown Church in the Vale--"O-oh come, come, come, come, come to the church in the wi-i-ild wood, oh come to the church in the vale. No-o place is so dear to my childhood. . . ."

Cedar Lake was created by a dam constructed by the Iowa Public Service Company in 1917. The hydroelectric plant operated until it was abandoned in 1965. The dam fell into disrepair, the lake ultimately drained, and the Cedar River once again flowed freely through Nashua.

While Cedar Lake existed, massive amounts of silt were deposited on its floor and after it drained, the deposits began to smell and supported all kinds of undesirable vegetation. About the mid-1980s a group of local citizens formed a committee to raise funds to remove the trees and plants and repair the dam. The dam was reconstructed in 1989 for the purpose of maintaining the water level of the lake. Cedar Lake now supports water recreation, and many new homes have been built on the clean shore property. In 2010 the City of Nashua received a license to re-install the power generating equipment and begin producing hydroelectric power.

I was born in Nashua and lived there until I left for college. My father was a concrete mason. He built farm feed lots, made concrete blocks and brick, concrete horse tanks, plastered home interiors, and other concrete jobs in and around Nashua. He also built the stone fence around the old family farm and it still exists today, although the farm is much changed.

My dad died when I was 16, and my mother, sister and I moved into a house closer to town. After my mother died in 1979, the house has changed hands and been remodeled several times, a tornado knocked out the huge trees in front, and this is how the house looks now--pretty good!

May 11 we drove from Halstead, Kansas to St. Joseph, Missouri, a beautiful drive through lush farm country. Part of our route took us over the Kansas Turnpike. I first traveled this pike in 1959 with my first wife, our baby son, a trailer house, and a 56 Mercury. We were on the way from Iowa City, Iowa, to Ft. Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma, where I began a two-year Army assignment with the Field Artillery. Patrice and I also passed Lawrence, Kansas, where I lived with my first wife, two sons and one daughter  in 1965-66, while I studied for a Masters Degree in Civil Engineering Water Resources at Kansas University (go Jayhawks!).

May 12 took us from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Story City, Iowa. At the Iowa Information Center in Lamoni we had Maid-Rite sandwiches. Weren't as good as I remember--what a nostalgia trip (they were historical, much loved, "sloppy joes")! Also passed by Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, where I get my Bachelor's Degree in Agricultural Engineering (go Cyclones!).

It's relaxing to sit in this nice site for four days. Weather has been fine--today we watched a thunderstorm pass by us with lots of rumbling and sheets of rain--it was about 100 degrees out! Tomorrow's supposed to be 76 degrees, quite a change. Loving life on the road.