Oh, Kearney.
Road Trippin': Day 5?
So I think it's been six days since we started, and we're now in our dear Davey Archwamety's hometown of Kearney, Nebraska, at a Day's Inn (which has so kindly furnished us with free wireless). It's no free apartment in Iowa, but the bed is huge, so I think I'll live. Kind of irritating that any city with a population of over 5,000 people won't charge less than 50 for a motel, though. :\ I wouldn't mind so much if we weren't trying to stay under the budget our parents set for us. That's why we're going to subsist on generic brand special K with strawberries and raisins for as much of the rest of our trip as possible...all these motels are really taking a bite out of our collective wallet, and with all the travel I've still got planned for the near future I can't afford to be shelling out much of my own cash once the generous donation runs out.
The day began with a hop over to Iowa City where we met some of my aunt's costumer friends from her University of Iowa days. Nine falafel, a five dollar expired meter ticket and some successful gift purchases later, we headed out towards where we are now (with the eventual destination, to be reached tomorrow, of somewhere in Colorado, either Colorado Springs or Denver if we're feeling metropolitan).
Iowa is a suprisingly beautiful state. I had expected something much more boring. However, beautiful does not always imply interesting, so I can understand how people can complain so much about it. It had lots of corn...lots and LOTS of corn. And farms. And tiny little towns in the middle of nowhere...sounds like New England with corn, really. I don't know how all you rural folks do it. We took a state-demarcated "Scenic Bypass" that ran parallel to I-80 for a while so we could catch a glimpse of what (more) "real" Iowa looked like, as opposed to just whatever businesses and people had the guts to move close to the interstate. (answer: strange rest stations, and nothing else. Maybe some dead bambis.) It turned out to be really nice. What's that word? Refers to the countryside...not agrarian...pastoral, that's it. Took lots of pictures. At some point we came across a field of...geese. There were probably fifty or sixty good sized-ones, all waddling together through a corn field towards a nearby pond. No clue why they weren't flying...my guess was that it was a funeral procession and they were on their way to float the body out on the water. (Maybe it could be on fire at the same time...isn't that a ritual somewhere?)
Nebraska hasn't been too interesting so far, but then again we've barely spent any time in it. Lincoln proved to have too many suburbs to sift through before we could get to the downtown so we turned back to the interstate. Somewhere along the road I noticed white clumps floating around and I thought it might be cotton coming out of the big truck coming up on my right, but as we got closer we realized that the cotton was moving, and then we realized that the entire truck was a giant chickenwire cage full of LIVE CHICKENS. I'm talking an entire semi full of seven layers of chickens. Some had whole wings stuck outside of the cage so it was getting torn at by the wind, most of the rest were just climbing over each other and being battered by the highway speeds and each other. It was totally something you'd see in a PETA video or something. Heh.
One really nice thing, though was the drive at the end of the evening. After a beautiful sunset, we noticed flickering lights over the fields beside the road. (We also noticed a disproportionately large number of bugs embedding themselves in our windshield--foreshadowing! Ooh!) I couldn't crane my head long enough to not get us killed (most of Nebraska's stretch of the interstate has a speed limit of 75, so I was going almost 90 at that point and concentrating rather hard on not driving off the road), so Kina took a good look and realized that they were fireflies! At the same time a perfectly mellow, slightly bittersweet melody came on the air (from a demo CD we received for free at the Eisley concert) came on, and the combination of the purple dusk, the mood music, and the dancing fireflies created one of those moments you only find in movies.
The very end of the night was slightly less fun, as it consisted of us driving later than we had hoped to and having trouble finding a motel that wouldn't rip us off, but here we are, safe and sound and ready for Colorado. I only got 4.5 hours of sleep last night because of my cough, so hopefully I'll beat that record tonight, but at least we gain an hour tomorrow in western Nebraska.
Tomorrow is Boulder, Golden, maybe swimming in a river, Denver, Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs. Supposedly.
All I can say is that the Day's Inn's "Hot" Breakfast (actual quote) had better be good.
So I think it's been six days since we started, and we're now in our dear Davey Archwamety's hometown of Kearney, Nebraska, at a Day's Inn (which has so kindly furnished us with free wireless). It's no free apartment in Iowa, but the bed is huge, so I think I'll live. Kind of irritating that any city with a population of over 5,000 people won't charge less than 50 for a motel, though. :\ I wouldn't mind so much if we weren't trying to stay under the budget our parents set for us. That's why we're going to subsist on generic brand special K with strawberries and raisins for as much of the rest of our trip as possible...all these motels are really taking a bite out of our collective wallet, and with all the travel I've still got planned for the near future I can't afford to be shelling out much of my own cash once the generous donation runs out.
The day began with a hop over to Iowa City where we met some of my aunt's costumer friends from her University of Iowa days. Nine falafel, a five dollar expired meter ticket and some successful gift purchases later, we headed out towards where we are now (with the eventual destination, to be reached tomorrow, of somewhere in Colorado, either Colorado Springs or Denver if we're feeling metropolitan).
Iowa is a suprisingly beautiful state. I had expected something much more boring. However, beautiful does not always imply interesting, so I can understand how people can complain so much about it. It had lots of corn...lots and LOTS of corn. And farms. And tiny little towns in the middle of nowhere...sounds like New England with corn, really. I don't know how all you rural folks do it. We took a state-demarcated "Scenic Bypass" that ran parallel to I-80 for a while so we could catch a glimpse of what (more) "real" Iowa looked like, as opposed to just whatever businesses and people had the guts to move close to the interstate. (answer: strange rest stations, and nothing else. Maybe some dead bambis.) It turned out to be really nice. What's that word? Refers to the countryside...not agrarian...pastoral, that's it. Took lots of pictures. At some point we came across a field of...geese. There were probably fifty or sixty good sized-ones, all waddling together through a corn field towards a nearby pond. No clue why they weren't flying...my guess was that it was a funeral procession and they were on their way to float the body out on the water. (Maybe it could be on fire at the same time...isn't that a ritual somewhere?)
Nebraska hasn't been too interesting so far, but then again we've barely spent any time in it. Lincoln proved to have too many suburbs to sift through before we could get to the downtown so we turned back to the interstate. Somewhere along the road I noticed white clumps floating around and I thought it might be cotton coming out of the big truck coming up on my right, but as we got closer we realized that the cotton was moving, and then we realized that the entire truck was a giant chickenwire cage full of LIVE CHICKENS. I'm talking an entire semi full of seven layers of chickens. Some had whole wings stuck outside of the cage so it was getting torn at by the wind, most of the rest were just climbing over each other and being battered by the highway speeds and each other. It was totally something you'd see in a PETA video or something. Heh.
One really nice thing, though was the drive at the end of the evening. After a beautiful sunset, we noticed flickering lights over the fields beside the road. (We also noticed a disproportionately large number of bugs embedding themselves in our windshield--foreshadowing! Ooh!) I couldn't crane my head long enough to not get us killed (most of Nebraska's stretch of the interstate has a speed limit of 75, so I was going almost 90 at that point and concentrating rather hard on not driving off the road), so Kina took a good look and realized that they were fireflies! At the same time a perfectly mellow, slightly bittersweet melody came on the air (from a demo CD we received for free at the Eisley concert) came on, and the combination of the purple dusk, the mood music, and the dancing fireflies created one of those moments you only find in movies.
The very end of the night was slightly less fun, as it consisted of us driving later than we had hoped to and having trouble finding a motel that wouldn't rip us off, but here we are, safe and sound and ready for Colorado. I only got 4.5 hours of sleep last night because of my cough, so hopefully I'll beat that record tonight, but at least we gain an hour tomorrow in western Nebraska.
Tomorrow is Boulder, Golden, maybe swimming in a river, Denver, Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs. Supposedly.
All I can say is that the Day's Inn's "Hot" Breakfast (actual quote) had better be good.
posted by Sassafrassy at 9:47 PM
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