Kickin' it with the Krauses: Adios Iowa

A little background information: Dustan had an internship with Koch Fertilizer at their plant in Fort Dodge, Iowa for this summer. After our trip to Jamaica at the end of the school year, we headed to Iowa in the middle of May for a three month internship. Dustan's work there was less engineering than he initially had hoped and more project management as he worked on a project to improve pump reliability. While Dustan worked, I had a part time job as a receptionist at the Fort Dodge Community Foundation and United Way and worked on an online class for school.

We are going to be brutally honest in this post... We aren't going to miss Fort Dodge. Yeah, we had an enjoyable summer and had some good adventures, but we won't miss it. The things we won't miss most are the weather, landscape, and jobs.

The weather was hot and humid. You walk out the door to start the day in the morning, the car is already burning hot from sitting in the sun, and you are sweaty before you even get to work. It is even worse when you leave work in the afternoon. When the sun goes down, it cools down...NOT. It stays hot and humid all night long, but instead the bugs swarm in. One thing that we did enjoy were the thunderstorms--the thunder and lightning were amazing! Unfortunately, the humidity was even worse afterward.

The landscape is flat. You could see forever if there wasn't corn blocking your vision. At least it was green. Fort Dodge did have a colorful landscape between the millions shades of green and gold. The biggest hill in town was just outside our home at the Community College on the bridge crossing the river. There is no such thing as mountain biking hiking unless you drive hours to find it. It is a different kind of pretty, that's for sure. One thing this flat landscape did have was beautiful sunsets.

This is actually a really hilly place for Iowa

Sunset over a cornfield

Dustan's learned a lot about himself this summer from his job. Like I mentioned earlier, there wasn't much technical engineering involved, as Dustan was doing more project management this summer. He was able to finish his project and save Koch a good amount of money each year through pump improvements he implemented. At the end of his internship, they loved him enough to offer him a full time position for next spring after we graduate in Enid, Oklahoma. And though the security and money was difficult to turn down, we didn't feel like this choice was right for us. Right now, Dustan wants to be in a career that is more technically challenging, so, our current plan for the future instead is to graduate with our Bachelors, then Dustan will go on to complete a Masters in controls and robotics in mechanical engineering.

Goodbye Fort Dodge

But even if we won't miss a majority of our experience in Fort Dodge, there are a couple things we wouldn't mind revisiting some day: the food and the people.

So the food. Not that the food in Iowa is any different from other places in a America, but there were a couple restaurants we just loved. First, Mineral City's fettucine alfredo and coconut crusted fruit salad. They are delicious and likely more unhealthy that we should probably be indulging in. Second, the Dariette. Ice cream that is to DIE FOR. Their original lemon ice cream is heaven. We are so disappointed that we didn't try the Dariette until our last week in Iowa, so we only had it once.

The people are kind and generous. We became quick friends with some people in the ward and they made Fort Dodge a home, even if it was only for a few months. They did their best to welcome us and make our time enjoyable, and we are so thankful for that. The game nights, barbecues, and pool parties made it worth it.

As result of our summer in Iowa, we've learned a little bit about what we want in the future. In simple terms, what is important to us are location, family, and jobs. We want to be in a place that has mountains with warm days and cool nights, and lacking humidity. We want to be near family, most of which are in the west in Washington, Colorado, and Utah. And we want a job that Dustan will really enjoy and feel fulfilled as he spends most of his days working.

Therefore, after school somewhere between the west coast and Colorado. And though we don't want to live in Iowa, our experience there for the summer did help us learn more about what we want in our near, scary future.

Here are just a few pictures of our final adventures in Iowa :)