Day 5

Driving Marathon

Florence, Kentucky to Missouri Valley, Iowa (truck stop north of Omaha, NE)

Today we wanted to get as many miles under us as possible. We ate a quick breakfast of oatmeal and muffins, and got out of the campground about 8:30 am. We drove in 5 different states and one time zone in our 15 hours of driving! Kentucky, Ohio (Cincinnati), into Indiana (Indiannapolis), Illinois (Peoria, Davenport) into Iowa (Iowa City, Des Moines) and then north around Omaha,  Nebraska (but we didn’t go into Omaha. We totaled 740 miles before we stopped at 11pm at a rest stop just north of Omaha. There were several trucks parked for the night and we were the only RV. We turned on the generator, ran the A/C for white noise and slept pretty well considering where we were.

Interesting tidbits from the day:

Heather drove for the first time for about 250 miles. It was really not too bad. Dennis pulled off at a rest stop, I got in the driver’s seat and drove until the next gas stop. After about 100 miles I got used to the floaty feeling and the play in the steering wheel. It was good for Dennis to get a break from concentration and he got to go sit back with the kids for awhile and watch a movie!

Because it was Dennis’ birthday, and because we were driving for so long, he decided that we would stop for dinner at a pizza place. So we found a local pizza joint in Iowa City and we managed to park the RV in the smallish parking lot. While they went in to order the pizza, I went across the parking lot to a place called Yummy’s Gourmet Cakes to see what they had-they ended up having a large variety of individual specialty cakes. I picked out 4 for us to share and a pack of birthday candles and surprised Dennis with some birthday cake on his birthday! We lit the candles and sang Happy Birthday at the pizza place while waiting for our pizza. The flavors we got were Boston Crème (which is Dennis’ favorite), Turtle, Banana Cream and Tiramisu. It was a fun and special way to make the day special!

Another thing that we got to experience was the immensity of the “Corn Belt”. The sheer volume of corn that is produced in this part of the country is extraordinary. Most of Indiana, and nearly all of Illinois, and certainly ALL of Iowa was nothing but corn field after corn field. Huge processing and storage facilities for the corn, and lots of advertising for ethanol. In fact, the higher grade gasoline out here is cheaper than the lower grade because it has more ethanol in it!

There are also windmills all over the place. There was even a rest stop that had a huge windmill blade built in to be part of the building! Huge windmill farms were very common-we would look across the fields and see windmills from horizon to horizon-as far as we could see. It really was quite incredible.

Even though it was a marathon day of driving-we really feel like we are fully into our RV adventure. Being out here where none of have ever been is very exciting!

 The message board for today-we got much further than our goal, and of course, dinner plans changed!

 Wind farms everywhere

 Lots of driving-the kids totally chilling. They do not even realize how fortunate we are to be able to travel across the county like this. I was never that comfortable in the car!

 My first time behind the wheel-intense concentration!

Sunset in Iowa