the Argiope Spider

Kayla and I saw this two weekends ago while we were camping at Moraine View State Park in Illinois.  It was very windy and mild temperature.  We were sitting on our tent's rain cover, while it was drying out, and reading Dave Ramsey.  Kayla saw this in the distance so I rushed and got the camera.  There are hundreds of subspecies of this spider.  It is also known as the "Black and Yellow Garden Spider".  This is the backside of the spider; the one below is the front side with its catch.  The little bugs you see on the web are soybean bugs, or something like that.  They had been flying around in swarms for two weeks, which is why there are so many on the web.  You would look outside and it looked like it was snowing.