Well our Trek America Tour has started....and started with a bang! Arrived at the hotel in Chicago to meet the others on the tour. There are nine of us alotether plus the tour leader, Emiko. Kar and I are the oldest, no surprise there. Even older than the leader! There are two swiss girls, a Japanese girl, two south korean boys, and english boy, welsh girl and kar and me representing Scotland!!! The tour van is grand, plenty space as there are only nine of us. First thing we had to do and will have to do every day is pack the van. Everything is taken down each night and everything put back on top in the morning. There's alot of stuff and Kar and I have the heaviest bags by far! Our first stop was the Alama Colonies in Iowa, a old German settlement, a bit like the Amish thing but not. The journey was about 6 hours of driving, lots of sleeping, lucky I can sleep anywhere. Even Karen is learning to. We arrived at the camp site first and set up our tents, we put up ours the quickest, that competitive nature creeping out. Once we were all set up, luggage in tents, PJs all laid out ready to get into, we went in to the village to have a look around and have dinner. The village was really quiet but we found the chocolate hause so had plenty tasters! Thankfully we nipped back to the tents before having dinner because some people had forgot to shut theirs, I forgot to take my i-pod so got that out of there. Then we went back to the village for a typical German dinner. I think we (being the oldest) ate the most. It was a huge buffet with lots of different types of meat. WHile having dinner the rain and wind started! We didn't think it was too bad until we got back to the campsite! All the tents and luggage were everywhere, the thunder storm had them strewn all over the place. You had to laugh orelse I would have cried. Our tent didn't look too bad but it was.....our bags were sitting in the puddles of rain and we couldn't even lift our tent to empty it because there was so much rain water in it. All our stuff was soaked!! Spent the most of that night going to and from the laundry trying to dry stuff. I thought Karen's stuff got the worst of it until I unpacked fully in the morning, everything was soaking wet...my teaching stuff.....receipts for hostels....new tops dyed from other clothes!! I officially hate camping and will never ever do this again!! Felt a bit better the next day but realsied even more of my stuff was soaked! Had a big day of driving on day 2, about 8 hours in the Van heading for Gothenburg in Nebraska. On the way we stopped off at John Wayne's birth place, it was in a quaint little village. Then we stopped at the Hogback bridge, an undercover bridge which was used in teh movies "Bridges of Madison County" with Clint Eastwood. The drive was actually ok, bit boring with only fields and fields of cornfields o look at. Must admit I find them a bit scary. Second night of camping went better but still not enjoying it. It was our turn (first ones) to cook dinner that night. Went well, quite the cooks! Made chicken pasta. Had a drink (note singular) round the campfire and an early night.