"On the way to Des Moines, IA.......Iowa City Stop....."

We're home from our trip to Des Moines, IA, where we attended a family reunion for Don's mother's side of the family. More on that in a later blog.

This blog entry (10 PHOTOS!) will be of our stop in Iowa City, IA, where Don attended college, and if you remember, we stayed on our drive home from Colorado, a week before the floods hit portions of Iowa, Wisconsin, and other states in the Midwest.

This is the Days Inn where we stayed and which I had posted a photo of in the June 18th blog entry. You're able to see the height/depth(?) that the floodwater's reached along the length of the building. All of the downstairs room doors were open and we were able to see that the interior was all gutted down to the studs of the walls.



This is basically what we saw along the entire business strip.......trash bins, sand bags, and piles of trash taken out of the ground level floors of businesses.


This is the University of Iowa's Library, which is located along side the Iowa River, but up and back from it. Notice the line of sand bags that had protected it.


Another view of the library with the English Philosophy Building in the background, where Don as a freshman gave a speech in Rhetoric 101 to his wide-eyed landlubber Iowa classmates about "growing up on an island". I'm sure that by the time he was done they envisioned something more tropical than suburban.


This is next to the power plant, which is directly on the river. Barely able to be seen, across the river, is the dorm in which Don lived for part of his time while attending U of I. That would not have been flooded because it actually is built up on quite a high bluff.

Across the Iowa River, the Hancher Auditorium (tallest building) and administrative offices/practice rooms (lower building, where Don practiced piano), were hard hit by the flooding.

The following 2 photos are of City Park. As you can see, all of the flood waters have not totally receded as yet.



This is the view of Danforth Chapel, with it's protecting wall of sand bags. While Don attended U of I, he also had helped with sand bagging behind the Union, which is very close to the chapel.

This was our parting photo of a house along the Iowa River, not far from where we stayed.


The damage caused by the flooding is unbelievable. Water is definitely a force to be reckoned with, and I think we normally take this for granted, until we see it's power first hand, or the aftermath of what it has done. This is just one small part of what the flooding did this year........truly amazing!