Iowa Trip, Monday, July 6

Took off the from the West Omaha, Nebraska, KOA about 9:30. Sandi says I don’t know how to dance, but she doesn’t see me in the middle of the night or first thing in the morning trying to find my way to the bathroom. I may have to patent a dance I do during this call of nature time. It’s kind of a leaning ahead, forward-stepping, cross-legged chicken walk on my tip-toes kind of move. I just replicate the same moves all the way to the bathroom moving slightly quicker as I get closer to my goal. Sometimes I stop momentarily and breathe deep before resuming. I just disregard any odd looks I get from other people and just mutter to them, “Just perfecting a new dance step.” I don’t know why they put the tent sites so far away from the bathrooms. The pull-through trailers with bathrooms are right next to it. The tents sites are on the other side of the property from them.

I thought we would be going into the land of milk and honey but we’re still in the sea of corn. Miles and miles of corn on both sides of the road. We’re well south of Kevin Bacon Country; we’re in Dorothy of Wizard of Oz fame country now. All these wide open spaces make me convinced that Dorothy’s folks just built their house in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’re miles of wide open fields with nary a made-made thing in sight, then all of a sudden there will be a forlorn house just sitting there. The newer ones are brick and block, the older wooden ones are somewhat like a sway-back mule, kind of saggy in the middle. The brick ones are probably descendants of Dorothy. I guess they learned. I wouldn’t be scared to live here unless that inland sea thing is true is this reverts one day back to an ocean. Then you’d have to worry about Tsunamis, tidal waves, and tornadoes.

We passed more museums that we didn’t stop at; Orphan Train Museum (Concordia, Kansas), Cedarville Museum, Morrowville Museum, Tractor Museum, and about a dozen other ones that I can’t remember. I tell you, I think there’s something to this museum idea business I wrote about yesterday! It has the potential to supplant Wal-Mart.

I think that we’re going through the very heart of Kansas. It’s a beautiful day. No sign of any storm-chasers or whatever they chase out here.




By the way, I had an epiphany in the shower this morning; I think there’s a market for a 3 pocket zip lock bag. Just think, wouldn’t you like the ease of packing a BLT sandwich and not having a gooey mess when it comes time to eat it? All parts of the sandwich could be placed in its own separate pocket to be put together at the proper time. I hope NASA isn’t reading my blog and end up stealing my idea then lamely claim that astronauts invented it in space.

We went through Cuba, Kansas looking for cigars, but the only thing we saw was a sign that said their kids had the distinction of winning the 1987 State Championship for Little League. No cigars.

Calvin is schooling us on the pros and cons of different historical weapons and the proper time to use each of them, mainly of the Roman era. Education like posing the question, “Who do you think would win, soldiers using slingers or archers?” When he’s not doing that he’s perfecting his vocal guitar riff. So far he’s up to about 10 notes. He can’t seem to find that 11th magical note so we’ve been hearing the same 10 notes from Oregon to Omaha. I think he may forego writing any notes down or even any tablature. He’s going directly for the music contract, possibly with the Carpenters, or if that doesn’t work out the Jonas Brothers.

Remind me when we get home that Sandi needs to go to the eye doctor. It was her turn driving when she started calling out the road signs asking me if I wanted to stop at any of them. I do feel kind of guilty for not stopping more, but we would run out of money before we ran out of tourist traps, museums, and points of interest. Anyway, one that was interesting to hear since I had my eyes closed was ‘Old Fart Haze.’ Why, I asked myself, would anyone think that this would work as a tourist destination was beyond me? I couldn’t conjure up any kind of a business plan that a bank lending officer would approve with a name like this. I couldn’t believe it so I opened my eyes to read the sign as we went by and had to correct her. It actually read, ‘Old Fort Hays.’

For the last 100 miles there have been signs along the road say things like ‘World’s Largest Prairie Dog’ 100 miles. I can just hear the kids begging their dads to stop every time they pass one of these signs. “Come on dad, this will be the world’s best ‘Show and Tell’ at school. I’ll probably get an ‘A” for ‘Show and Tell.’ You’re always telling me to try my hardest and think outside the box. How many other kids can say that they’ve seen the world’s largest Prairie Dog?” Anyway, we happened to pull off at the off-ramp where this was at, but we didn’t notice until we were sitting in the restaurant and looking out the window. There it was, a sign that read, ‘World’s Largest 8,000 pound Prairie Dog,’

I have another epiphany to share. I’m starting to see a pattern here. I get these epiphanies right after I wake up from either a good night’s sleep or a SNAP (short nap). As you may imagine I feel very guilty for not stopping more often and taking advantage of these ‘merican sites. I can’t imagine how many museums, points of interest, historical signs, and Prairie Dog Museums we’ve driven by. I think I could save everyone a lot of time and money by just reading about all these sites. I’m going to propose an idea to Doubleday Press. I don’t want to tell them the idea or they may give it to someone else, but I’ll write it on my blog so I have proof of it. All I’ll ask for is an advance of say…$300 a day. Here’s the idea; I’ll just drive through and about “merica and take careful notes on what ALL of the attractions are. I’ll write it all down and they can sell a book. This way ‘mericans can read about this great country of ours without ever leaving their sofa. It’s a great way to save the environment too as they won’t be driving up and down the highway looking for museums and Prairie Dog museums.

We’re going through eastern Kansas and just before we stopped for our evening nourishment at Oakley, Kansas I may have just witnessed the maximum exploitation of land use. In a ¼ mile stretch along the I-70 we saw cows grazing, oil wells pumping, corn growing, and wind turbines in use. At that rate when someone comes back here in 100 years there’ll just be a sunken dry wasteland with the air all sucked out of the sky because of these multiple uses all going on.

We’ve been driving in two-hour shifts, but we’ve been driving so long today I think I may have bunions on my bum. I just figured out something else I wouldn’t be good at; truck driving.