Sugar Bottom at Coralville Dam

Campgrounds are crowded for the first busy weekend of summer.  We were lucky to snag the last site at Sugar Bottom Campground, near the Coralville Dam.  Our campsite is large but has only electric hookup...so we decided to "rough it" for the weekend stay.  Ah, the lilacs are in bloom and nothing compares to their sweet aroma. 
The Coralville Dam was built for flood control on the Iowa River.  Historic floods, however, in 1993 poured over the dam spillway and eroded a deep channel into the underlying bedrock deposits.  The waters receded and left a bed of fossils from the Devonian age.  We walked on the (former) ocean floor to view a glimpse of Iowa's past.

Devonian Fossil Gorge