Weekend Roadtrip

We're back! Did you miss us? Chances are you didn't, but Mykell and I had a great time checking out the University of Iowa over the weekend. While there, we joined about 800 other parents and prospective students for tours, chats, panels, and more tours. Beautiful weather, fun campus and lots of talk, talk, talking. Yep, that was our weekend. Lots of tough college choices ahead, that's for sure. Here's Mykell (and her new Iowa T-shirt) with Clara Bell the cow, supporting a local dairy.

The best part of the trip was the drive. I'm lying. After 900 miles there and back, looking at farm after farm, I started thinking that Mykell can go to school right here and not miss a thing. :)

I know some of you have never visited the lovely, peaceful, serene Midwest, so here is a photo tour of some of the places you've missed. Can you tell the difference between Iowa and Indiana? The first few pics are taken at a location about 400 miles from home, then there's the Mississippi, and the last are all within 50 miles of home. We didn't take pictures in Illinois because they were busy burning in their fields. And give me a break on the picture quality. We were driving on the freeway, for heaven's sake!

The MIGHTY MISSISSIPPI

The day after we arrived home, we drove into Ohio to have Easter dinner with Grandma and Grandpa. You would never know from these pictures that they live just outside Cincinnati, or that we live in a small city. Check out these farm pictures, again, within fifty miles. Now you see why it makes no sense to drive anywhere for Spring Break. You could drive hundreds of miles in any direction and it would still look the same. I'm calling it "quaint". But there is a certain satisfaction in knowing that we live so close to so much food. If there were a national emergency, I'm convinced that those of us in the Midwest would still eat well, while those in New York or Los Angeles would probably eat each other. Shudder, shudder. Enjoy the cute farm scenery. Most of these are corn fields so they haven't started planting yet, but the saying for corn when we lived in California went, "Knee high by the 4th of July." Then you know you've got a good crop.

The white bundles are huge rolls of hay wrapped in plastic.





Ahhh, nice to be home again. No picture necessary.