We began our day by waking to a room that looked much worse than we noticed the night before, like put together by three year olds bad. As you might have guessed we packed up rather quickly and made our way out of 'East Jabip', Indiana. We headed west on Rt 6 and found ourselves in the town of Nappannee, IN where we stopped for breakfast at McDonalds. As we pulled into the parking lot we see a sign along the far row indicating horse and buggy parking. There was even some poop to make the picture complete!
Right next door there were more buggies parked by the hardware store. Then just down the road we saw one in action. Not that we haven't all seen buggies in PA, but the novelty is obviously still there. We got a kick out of the whole thing, and the men doing construction next door thought we were total weirdos taking pictures of the above sign.
Nappannee's town logo, written on their quaint town sign, read "Embrace the Pace." I thought this might have to do with the potentially torturous driving pace being behind a buggy or a tractor, but while in line at McDonalds we discovered this meant more broadly the terribly slow pace of the townspeople in general. Slowest breakfast sandwiches and coffee from a 'fast food' place, ever.
Illinois: Not much to say on this leg of the journey. We avoided the tolls successfully which greatly pleased our driver! I actually got a picture the sign! We avoided Chicago and traffic and it was smooth but slow sailing, minus a small incident involving and unlabeled road, stop signs, and a unhappy trailer. We hopped back on I-80 West and finally felt like we were making strides across the flat plains of the US.
Here are some photo's illustrating just how flat and boring these plains are. I didn't take any other pictures, because this is truly what it looked like out our window all day.
This here is the Mississippi River. I was really hoping we would see some awesome riverboats with casinos on board, but it was really just as flat as the landscape and it's not as wide that far north as I had thought. Though Jen just told me she thought this was the best thing she saw all day... which is absolutely true. For the minute we were driving over it we were finally looking at something other than cut down corn fields!
Iowa: We entered Iowa and drove half way across the state. There's not much to say on this early part of our afternoon. It passed much as the morning had with flat scenery all around. Though, I did start reading The Great Gatsby out loud to car at about this point. We've all read it but are giving it another go as the newest remake movie comes out at Christmas this year.
Shortly into our Iowa leg, we stopped a visitor center. Jacob seems to be really puzzled about the massive modern sculptures we've found at all these tiny Interstate rest stops along the way and always comments on them so I thought we could share some puzzling art with you.
And Jen and I were taking a walk around the grounds stretching our legs and found this unsettling sign posted by a hose. We just wonder, why?
Just as we were about to finally take a break from I-80 West and try to get up to I-90 West, in Minnesota, before the night was over we stopped at a Kum and Go station. I just found this name to be absolutely ridiculous. I grabbed some candids as we went through our gas routine of wandering about, emptying trash, and checking truck fluids. The girl at the Kum and Go was nice and tried to give us some suggestions of place to eat along the way, but we became more fascinated by the other guy in the store. He was older and told us he was just driving back from a stay in Mexico, and he looked like he had sat out and baked all summer and gotten super leathery!
We jumped off I-80 and got onto I-35... upon which time Jacob fell in love with the road! Literally, he could not stop talking about how much he loved this road. I-35 was smooth, and the trailer was riding smooth, and there were no weird wind gusts rocking us, and he just loved it.
We finally took a dinner break in Clear Lake, IA. It almost looked like real civilization, except there were only restaurants, churches, RV and boat sellers, and mechanics... but it was a lot better than we had seen most of Iowa. We couldn't decide what to eat so we ended up driving past everywhere but that last place in town. On the edge of some more fields. It looked like a family friendly place, so Jacob gave his approval and we found parking in the church lot next door and only took up 7 spaces or so!
The restaurant was called Other Place, and when I had first seen the name listed on the GPS I thought it just didn't know the name of this place, but no it's just another oddly named midwestern dining facility. This was quite a step up from the night before though.
Just a word about our waitress: She stole us. We were supposed to be another girl's table but this crazy, fast talking, buggy eyed, on speed lady came up and just asked, "Did Sam stop by yet?" We said no and she said ok good I'm stealing you. And she did. Then we were getting evil eyes from the real waitress all night. It was awkward, but kinda funny. Anyhow, the waitress we did have was a whirlwind and kept us quite entertained.
After dinner we hit the road again. We drove the 30 odd miles to get the heck out of Iowa, and jumped on I-90 W in Minnesota. We drove along and realized even in the dark that this would be just as boring as Iowa. (Below is the Minnesota state sign. I was all ready to photograph... and it doesn't have reflective letters just a sign shaped like the state. Boring!)
We could not be in the car any longer! So we finally stopped in this little 'town' (term used lightly since we saw no actual houses, just the gas station, restaurant, and motels...) called Blue Earth, MN. We checked into the Super 8, and the desk people marched (literally) out of some side room and very seriously did the paper work. One girl just stood there stooped over the other persons shoulder and would not look at us. It was odd. I tried hard to get pictures loaded and write this post, but the wi-fi sucked. So we just relaxed and watched part of Dirty Dancing on TV before we all passed out!
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