Recap: Minnesota to New York

As I blogged here on Thursday morning, we awoke to rain in Albert Lea. We’d had some thoughts of trying to get to Milwaukee for a baseball game at 12:05, but I had a number of labs due for my online class, and the last day they could be handed in was Friday (I only figured all of this out on Monday--I somehow thought the class ended in mid-May...silly me!) So the first order of the day was to find a wireless connection so I could hand in the work I’d done. In our phone call Wednesday night, Nanny gave me the address of a Starbucks in town, and after a few false starts, we found it. Did you know wireless at Starbucks is not always free? Me neither! I had to buy it from T-Mobile (GOUGERS!) for $10 a day! But it had to be done to ease my mind, so it was done, and most of my work was passed in.

The Beast, as we’ve come to call it, didn’t seem to mind the rain any more than it minded the wind--which was still present, mind you--and we steered south into Iowa. Guess what? Iowa is very flat. There are many farms in Iowa. I kept singing “Coming Up Close” by ‘Til Tuesday, both out loud and in my head, all the way through the state. I wanted to get a picture of “...a farmhouse that had long since been deserted...” There were a couple of good prospects, but stopping the Beast doesn’t happen on a dime, and there were few good places to stop.

Weather Lad and I played a couple of fun car games, one alphabetical and one finding objects. It was cool, and it kept my mind occupied. By the time we hit Davenport, the landscape was a little more rolling, and we came over a hill to see a big ‘ol bridge spanning the Mighty Mississippi. About that time, the sun peeked through, and after getting gas (did I mention the Beast really likes her gas, to the tune of about 15 mpg, and she has a really small gas tank, so fill-ups come about once every 1.5 to 2 hours: my back thanks her, since at least I get to stretch fairly frequently) we took some pictures at the scenic turnout over the river, and headed on into Illinois. The Beast is also not the fleetest of vehicles: imagine one of your Tonka trucks driving around with your toy box on top of it. You get the idea.

So Weather Lad said: “One good thing about this camper: you won’t get caught speeding.”

I replied “Not on the freeway, anyway.”

He said: “Hey, was I just being half-full?”

“Yes, you were”, I replied.

I had to chuckle when he said “I’m getting pretty good at this”

We had dinner at the Peru Mall. You go away for a few days, and look what happens!

Gas prices were the highest yet in Joliet, Illinois (Joliet Jake says hi) at $3.94.

We then crossed into Indiana and stopped for the night at a Day’s Inn, mostly for the free wireless. The room was altogether pretty nasty, as was that entire section of Indiana.

We woke to hear of the possibility of severe thundershowers in the Tri-State area, along with damaging winds and hail. Also a possibility of 9-12 inches of snow in Sioux Falls, S.D. Wow. I decided we should put as much distance between us and that line of weather as possible in as short a time as possible. So we bugged out of Portage at 9 am, and the nastiness of far-western Indiana soon gave way to land that looked just as flat and agricultural as Southern Minnesota, Eastern Iowa, and Southern Illinois. Amazingly enough, Ohio looked the same until we hit Cleveland, where we wished we’d had time to check out the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame and maybe an Indians game. Some other time, I guess, but Weather Lad did get a couple of glimpses of Lake Erie, and of Euclid, Ohio, home town of the main character in Walk Two Moons, one of his favorite books. East of Cleveland the terrain turned much hillier, but far less windy. The Beast approved. She likes the hills, but not the wind.

When we were crossing the border into Pennsylvania, I realized we never took any pictures of Weather Lad in Ohio. The only loss here is that there is one less picture of him. The only thing I would likely go back to Ohio for is the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame.

Pennsylvania was a refreshingly short jaunt, where we stopped at a place called Boston’s in Erie. It was a very good sports bar. Weather Lad had the mac ‘n cheese, while I had Jambalaya Linguini. Mmmm.

We called home right after dinner, and the phone call took us all the way into New York. Weather Lad watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, downloaded from iTunes last night at the hotel.

He was so intent watching that he never really noticed we’d gone through Buffalo and headed east on the Thruway. Tonight we are in a rest area on the Thruway as I type this, and I’ll go post it in the morning right before we leave. We are less than 250 miles from Albany, which puts us in striking distance of Peru by tomorrow night. I feel like a trucker.