We got a slow start, rolling out mid day after making three days worth of sandwiches, roasted pork on good Italian bread with cheese and horseradish sauce and lots of lettuce. About the only way I can stay awake on long drives is to spend them gnawing on something every once and a while, dragging along a cooler full of food. We drove the first day on mostly two lane roads from home across Iowa, through Dubuque, around Des Moines, stopping at a ratty little Super 8 motel between nowwhere I wanted to be and nowhere anybody seemed to care about.
All day long the land got flatter as we rolled west, the vast flat broken only by the big grain storage silos that poked up out of the landscape, looking like lonely skyscrapers or steamboats coming over the curve of the ocean.
Interstate highways sure homogenize and suck the joy and diversity out of the drive west. It's all chain restaurants and big box stores punctuated by miles of corn stubble and trailer homes and beat up farms.
And WalMarts. Way to many Walmarts and too many rotted and empty downtowns where you do get off the interstates.
We stumbled into the hotel, burned down some herb and I spent the rest of the evening either snoring or cleaning our .45 and watching TV preachers or The Weather Channel. The next morning we hit the road early, knowing the long boring drive across Kansas would take most of the day.
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