Friday, November 19, 2004

Iowa to Wisconsin

I think my brain died.  Rain rain rain rain.  Nebraska, Iowa.  Rain.  We hit the largest town so far - Des Moines.  It stretched for quite a ways.  I think the largest town off 80 since California.  Nebraska was just as flat as feared and we started the day with a lovely bruhaha.  We got breakfast coupons (one of the reasons we stayed at the hotel we did) and got them to go for the kids.  Boys were miffed (and probably cranky from lack of sleep) when they got in the car.  We were all cranky and sleepy and about 10 minutes down the road errupted in fighting (between mom and dad after jesse and pike started hitting each other).  Ellen was awakened and everyone was in a particularly SOUR mood.  Headed down the road and everyone fell asleep (except the drivers) and as the miles passed so did the anger.  Kids slept for a good hour or more.  We stopped in Des Moines as instructed by CompUSA where they could not fix the missing PG DN key on my laptop (only 3 weeks old) and we spent an hour there bitching and bemoaning.  Nursed Ellen in the store and freaked the entire store population of employees (there must have been 3 employees for each customer).  Noone said a thing but they all came by; one by one or in pairs to check out the strangeness.   We left I80 behind and headed up 35 to eventually (tomorrow) pick up I90. 

Found the rain again in eastern Nebraska and it followed us all the way, getting heavier and heavier to Mason City Iowa.  We are absolutely in the middle of bumfuck (with a capital B and captial F) Iowa and the hotels are the most expensive yet.  Cigarette smoke abounds; from the swimming pool (indoor) to the restaurant; It never occurred to me that a family hotel (Holiday Inn) would allow so much cigarette smsoke.  Snob alert:  Coffee is advertised (with pride) as FOLGERS!!  Luckilly we brought our own from CA and brought it to the table along with soymilk. Between that and nursing Ellen, we’re the talk of the hotel.

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