Finally our trip starts in earnest! We have driven through 8 states in 2 days so far, stopping in Ashtabula, Ohio the first night and in Des Moines, Iowa the second. The first leg of the trip I would characterize as Familiar, because after living for 35 years in Massachusetts, wooded, hilly terrain is familiar to me. The second leg we are calling Flat, and although Iowa was a little more rolling than we expected, this leg continues through Nebraska. The Flat region features unfamiliar items including posted Interstate speeds of 70 mph,  100-foot-tall cell towers not even pretending to be trees, mushroom-shaped municipal water tanks, staggeringly enormous warehouses, triple-tandem trucks, and wide-distance views that include lots of sky.

Driving 10+ hours a day starts out well but later gets hard. It’s something that happens, and while it is happening we aren’t sure if we can really do it, but then we do. Every time we get out of the car we hobble, at least for a short time. We have 3 more days, and are waiting to see if this gets more challenging or easier.

Road food is horrible, a true Hobson’s choice.

One might guess that Internet apps could guide us the entire way, but one might not have reckoned on one’s children. We quickly discovered that we had a dearth of mobile data and initially asked both boys to shut down. That enabled navigation, but in order to add Spotify, we had to modify our Verizon contract, which is easily done while cruising down the highway, and ideally not irreversible.

We’re in the middle of the Midwest now, and although we have relatives, friends, and childhoods in the red states, we find ourselves influenced by the US zeitgeist. Is the friendly fellow at the next table carrying a gun?  Does the gal behind the cash register think non-Christians will burn eternally? Would the hotel clerk treat us differently if we weren’t white and heterosexual? We aren’t paranoid about it, but we wonder.

We had a yummy, Paula-Deen-style meal at a friendly, pleasant local restaurant tonight. Compared to it, folk dancing looks like the United Nations.