A weekend away

Each weekend here is needed for writing the papers which are due the following week. But the weekend between the first and second terms was completely free, so my room mate ( a US term meaning flat mate) and I headed out country for the weekend to go camping.

I wasn't quite sure what we were going to. Remember that Nebraska is flat and Iowa is even flatter, so magnificent mountains weren't on the cards. One of my classmates cautioned us to not get trampled by a cow.  But what we did find was Hitchcock Nature Centre in Iowa, which was a small national park with some low hills and nice wooded areas. It's also part of a north-south bird migration corridor, so there was plenty of bird life, and even observation towers where serious twitchers go to survey the numbers of particular birds at key migration seasons.

This was unlike my usual multi-day distance treks. We found a little campsite to pitch the tents, and unlike most Australia national parks in summer could make a fire, so we did the kind of slowing down which is necessitated by only having one cooking pot: boil water to make tea, then boil some rice, then fry up some meat, slowly, slowly. Patience is not my strong suit so this was good for me. It was lovely to fall asleep watching fireflies and wake up to the sound of the birds.