Time / distance traveled since last post: About 12 hours, about 850 miles
Total time / distance traveled: About 88 hours, about 5850 miles
I write to you tonight from my bargain hotel room in Davenport, Iowa, for what will be my last night west of the Mississippi River for this trip (I am currently just under 10 miles from crossing the Mississippi into Illinois). It's been a loooong day of uneventful driving, so this post is going to be a very short one.
My last post came right before heading over to my Aunt Lolly and Uncle Jim's house in the Columbine neighborhood of Colorado (yes, THE Columbine) for Easter dinner. In attendance were my cousins Mark and Molly, my Aunt Eileen and Uncle Clay/Bruce/Whatever his name is this week, and of course the hosts themselves, Aunt Lolly and Uncle Jim (also present was Tanner, who just may be my favorite dog of all time, and I believe 3 cats, but I may have miscounted). Sitting down to good wine and hors d'oeuvres (an offering of savory jalapeno poppers with the much appreciated raw veggies with curried yogurt dip for the health-conscious like myself) we conversed and reminisced of family, friends and the sort. The main course for dinner was a delectable Jones ham, which comes from a farm in the greater Russell home town of Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, that was carved impeccably by yours truly, if I may say so myself (I just quit my job of 3 years in which I was essentially cutting meat with much finer precision, so I had better done a good job!). Accompanying the salted piggy wer a casserole of sweet potatoes (a favorite of mine, particularly appreciated given my lack of beta-carotene sources on this trip) adorned with walnuts et. al., and freshly steamed asparagus, served with just a squeeze of lemon juice. So maybe there was also supposed to be an apple salad that I negligently left on the Parker Russell's kitchen counter... I suppose that one will go down as a mystery. Nevertheless, I can't put into words just how excellent two delicious and nutritious home-cooked dinners in a row can make you feel after you've been on the road for 18 days eating at truck stops and burrito joints (not that I would ever bash the burrito as a viable food group).
After dinner we sat down to a pot of green tea, a tasty and refreshing desert of chocolate covered strawberries (courtesy of Aunt Eileen), and of course a good old fashioned cut-throat family game of Oh Hell. I've never met a non-Russell who is familiar with the card game, but also have never seen someone learn the game who did not soon thereafter become a bloodthirsty card-wielding predator. Oh Hell can best be described as a hybridization of Hearts rules with bidding somewhat similar to Bridge, but it's every man or woman to his or her self. I was very happy to have won the game in an astonishing display of cunning wit (save the modesty; there's no room for that in this game), which brought the night to a conclusion. Saying farewell to my cousins and previous night's hosting Aunt and Uncle, I retired to the guest room for the evening's slumber.
Over the course of this trip I have been so fortunate as to have been offered unprecedented hospitality by noble friends, family, and the occasional perfect stranger, all of whom I thank endlessly and offer whatever services I may provide in the future as tokens of my gratitude. This notwithstanding, my Aunt Lolly's guest quarters (and Uncle Jim's, though for some reason I seem to presume that the subtle feminine touches were not predominantly his own) warrant AT LEAST a 4 star hotel rating. Not only was the very large room with attached guest bathroom all beach-themed (no matter where you're traveling, the beach theme just seems to put you at ease), but comes complete with a custom basket of in-case-you-forgot toiletries and A KEURIG SINGLE-CUP COFFEE MACHINE COMPLETE WITH COFFEE, DECAF, HALF-CAF, HOT COCOA AND GREEN TEA!?! Auntie (and Uncle), you truly have outdone yourselves. If ever this couple should start a bed and breakfast chain, I will rate it very favorably and recommend to all of my friends.
I awoke at around 8:30am, took a shower, got dressed, made a cup of green tea (which I could do... with my Keurig machine... that was in my guest room... all for me...) and went down to meet my Aunt and Uncle, who had ready for me a delicious hot breakfast cleverly composed of ingredients from the previous night's meal (vegetable egg scramble, sweet potato pancakes and ham, of course). Not wanting to leave, I reluctantly packed my car as the good Uncle added some oil to my car's tank (almost 3000 miles since my last oil change my oil was still quite clean due to the short time period and almost exclusive highway driving, so my sources had agreed that I could wait until tomorrow morning for a full change). Hugging my Aunt and Uncle goodbye, I was off by 10:30am, headed east until I couldn't head east no more!
Let me just say that the plain states are very aptly named, as over the course of over 850 miles of driving in the rain it has been my pleasure to behold so many fields of corn and so many cows that I almost began crossing my fingers for a tornado, if just to break-up the monotony. Imagine, if you will, beholding only this specific combination of flora and fauna for three grueling hours, and THEN you get into Nebraska... Never again will I underestimate just how underwhelming eastern Colorado can be. Driving through Nebraska I stopped for one final burrito on this trip (I presume it will at least be one of the last 5) at a Taco John's, which can best be described as Taco Bell that serves everything with a side of tater tots. Yeahhhh bad call. After beholding the roughly two buildings that make up Lincoln and Omaha, I was in Iowa. Disappointed to find that Iowa was much of the same (though roughly double the population, which says very little, and a chain of gas stations with the double-take worthy name of "Kum-n-Go") and that there weren't hoards of kids wearing Slipknot shirts, I blitzed through the bulk of the state. My Arizona hostess, Crystal, in her unending kick-assitude, had arranged for me a place to crash with her Aunt and Uncle just outside of Des Moines, which is in the west-center of the state. It was my utmost displeasure to have to decline this offer at the last minute, as I had been running numbers with regards to my deadline to arrive in Chicago (in order to meet a special guest traveler, whom I will introduce in my next post) and my necessitated departure time from Des Moines, which considering rush-hour traffic in the route (about which my Uncle had just warned me) would be around 4:00am. It was very tough for me to do, especially since if Crystal's relatives are a fraction as cool as her I would have had a much more pleasant evening, but I continued on past Des Moines for three hours before shacking-up here in Davenport.
Alas I must close this post so that I may sleep and awaken early tomorrow for my final haul to and first day in Chicago. Keep posted!
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