Driving East

Exactly two weeks ago, Kelle and I left Tucson to drive east. Both of our parents were being buried in Iowa and we felt it was safer to drive their urns to Iowa than fly them. The last thing we wanted was for TSA to tell us we were missing some paperwork or we had too many urns (our dad was in two urns—long story) or to have any other kind of mishap with the urns. We just didn't want to have any snags. So we loaded what Kelle called our VIP passengers in the back seat, filled the car with a set of Mom's china for Peter and Jessa (who were driving to the funeral from Philadelphia), and pointed the car toward the Mississippi River. Our first stop: Hatch, New Mexico for lunch at a local eatery that had a restaurant-themed sculpture garden out front, including Bob's Big Boy.

We stayed our first night in the most well-known location on our route: Santa Fe. (Other than Santa Fe, we drove through and stayed in places we'd never or barely heard of.) After checking into our hotel, we walked through the old city, including the Santa Fe Plaza (above), where we had dinner. It was pretty and charming and felt practically European. 

We spent our second night in Dodge City, Kansas. In preparing for the trip, it sounded like Dodge City might be an interesting place to stop. It was not. However, for the entire trip Kelle was enthralled with all things agriculture or, as I referred to it, corn and cows. The part of Kansas we were in had a lot of livestock, so her first fascination was with cattle. After dinner we went for a walk from our hotel and came upon a herd of longhorns grazing in a (fenced) field in town. I had more fun watching her watch the cattle than I did seeing longhorns up close for the first time in my life. They were definitely the highlight of our stop in Kansas. (Oh, and we also learned that even female longhorns have horns!)

I never liked comparing ourselves to Thelma and Louise as things didn't turn out so well for those two women, but when you get two females on a road trip together, a comparison is almost unavoidable. And when you have a bag of over a hundred of your mom's scarves in the backseat, you have props for a picture like this one.

There's not much at all along state highway 50 through Kansas. So we decided to make a little detour to a fairly large town called Newton. Kelle found a terrific coffee shop called Norm's and we went inside to get some sustenance. And in walk all this group of men and Kelle, who has never in her life been called shy, started talking to them about their overalls (don't ask) and within seconds (no exaggeration) they agreed to pose for a picture with her (see above). When she found out they had just left their Bible study group I was worried she'd never leave them, but thankfully they had a quick chat and a picture and we were on our way.

Just over the Missouri border on I-35 is the tiny town of Lamoni, Iowa. (And because I find this kind of thing interesting, it's pronounced Lamon-I, not Lamon-EE.) It has a small college so I figured it would be substantial enough to merit an overnight stop. (It was, but barely.) We stayed in a cute bed and breakfast called The Peppermill and couldn't resist taking a picture in our adorable room. We happened to be the only guests for the night so we had the entire place to ourselves except for our charming hostess who we enjoyed talking to at breakfast.

Remember I mentioned that my sister was fascinated by agriculture? This was the second time she had us take pictures in front of a corn field. (And there were many more times when she wanted to until I pointed out that we were either on a busy road or there was a huge ditch between us and the corn. Otherwise, we'd have taken pictures in front of corn and cows nonstop.) In Lamoni, right in town, was this field. She had us take about a half dozen selfie videos recreating the "is this Heaven? no it's Iowa" line. We were laughing so hard, and then when we got all done we got YELLED AT by some people at the retirement home across the street. (Of course, that only made the experience richer.) Later, when we met up with the rest of the family for Mom's funeral, we shared our videos and inspired multiple other family members to create their own "is this heaven? no it's Iowa" videos in local corn and soybean fields. 

We spent the last evening of our road trip in little Lamoni. We ate dinner at one of two restaurants in town—a Mexican place run by a husband and wife who sat in the dining room and chatted with us as we were the only customers. Then we went over to Graceland University to go for a walk through the campus and also on this walking path that traverses the town and the campus. It turns out that little Graceland is the alma mater of Caitlin Jenner, so it has some  phenomenal athletic facilities, especially (of course) the track. And then the next day, three and a half days after starting our journey, we reached our destination in northeastern Iowa. More on that tomorrow.