June 11, 2004

Des Moines, Ia.

After lots and lots of driving, we have arrived at this evening’s destination, downtown Des Moines, Iowa. It seems that there’s a pork convention in town this weekend (which brings strange images to the imaginative mind), so it took a bit of begging to get a hotel room. At the second hotel we stopped at (which was just full of pork apparently), the desk clerk pretended to be Mrs. Cochran and called eight hotels demanding a room for us; so we finally settled in at the Savery Hotel. It’s a tiny room, but it’s adequate for the night.

We haven’t seen any serious storms today, but they’re promising some fun for tomorrow. Earl has agreed to “hover” in Central Iowa and western Illinois to watch for the storms they’re predicting for tomorrow. We’ll probably only get as far as Joliet, but we’ll still be home by Saturday night.

Today we hit quite a few states – Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and then back into Iowa. We didn’t really need to go into Nebraska, but because we were skirting the border along Interstate 29, we took the extra 20 minutes and drove through Omaha. Yay! Another state for the map. I’ve added my last new state (Nebraska) for this trip, and Earl did the same with Iowa.

Kansas City was a bit hectic… I wish my cousin Becky still lived there so we could have visited with her. We haven’t seen her in a long time.

Now we’re going to settle in for the night… room service just arrived. Time to get the tummy full!