We made it home.\u00a0 We were in no hurry again this morning.\u00a0 It\u2019s vacation, right?\u00a0 Our last day of lazy mornings and no need to be anywhere soon.<\/p>\n
I started out in the passenger seat.\u00a0 I wanted one good day to brown my right arm.\u00a0 Since I do a lot of the driving, my left arm gets pretty brown after a day or so.\u00a0 It had been too hot from Texas to Iowa to have the windows down.\u00a0 A\/C was a requirement to sustain life.<\/p>\n
I got a couple of good hours in before I needed to take my turn at the wheel.\u00a0 It was also my turn to read one of my books and ignore Rich.\u00a0 Seemed fair since he was reading his newspaper and playing Sudoku.\u00a0 By then, we were at the Illinois border.<\/p>\n
We noticed right away that it had rained on this side of the river.\u00a0 And rained a lot by the look of it.\u00a0 There were flooded fields everywhere.\u00a0 It had been dry over on the Iowa side.\u00a0 At least it was sunny now.\u00a0 We were making good time, until we hit the continuous road construction that occurs on this stretch of 88.\u00a0 Every time I come this way, there is construction.\u00a0 I think this is how they occupy those guys in the part of Illinois.<\/p>\n
At one point, I thought it was trying to rain on us. I kept hearing what sounded like raindrops hitting the car.\u00a0 No water though.\u00a0 Then I realized that I was running into bugs.\u00a0 As we moved east, the bugs got bigger and there were more of them.\u00a0 What was that movie some years back about a growing bug population?\u00a0 Maelstrom I think it was called.\u00a0 I felt like I was living it.\u00a0 Once we turned north, the onslaught stopped.<\/p>\n
On the road, we had a lot of conversations.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to put them down on paper.\u00a0 It was more than funny billboards and interesting people in the car that we passed.\u00a0 I like talking to Rich and I think our individual sense of humor plays off the other one.\u00a0 Probably one of the reasons I like him hang around.\u00a0 That and he pays his share of the bills.<\/p>\n
When we got outside of Dallas, Rich was looking for the Texas roadmap that he had collected when we had entered the state some days ago.\u00a0 We stopped at just about every Welcome center we hit during the trip.\u00a0 It was a good place to stop for a break and talk to someone about their state.\u00a0 Rich would get a roadmap for the state and any brochures that he thought looked interesting.\u00a0 You never know when you might come back to visit the state.<\/p>\n
So when Rich wanted to know something about roads, he would pull out the map of that state and study it for directions.\u00a0 He was also looking for things we might stop and see.\u00a0 We like playing tourist.\u00a0 We will stop for just about anything interesting.<\/p>\n
However, on this occasion, Rich just could not find that darn Texas roadmap.\u00a0 He looked in the glove compartment, the hidey-hole in the console, and in the back seat.\u00a0 After a while, we started to speculate where that map might have gone.\u00a0 Did it get thrown out with trash?\u00a0 Did someone break into the car and take just that map?\u00a0 Maybe the guys at the repair shop took it.<\/p>\n
Then we started getting closer to home.\u00a0 Maybe Lily was reading it and forgot to put it back.\u00a0 No, maybe Rose took it because she knew it would drive Rich crazy when he couldn\u2019t find it.\u00a0 We reached Oklahoma by that time and Rich pulled out that state map.\u00a0 Our thoughts moved on to other things.<\/p>\n
We always have music playing on the radio.\u00a0 Rich prefers Bluesville to most of the channels we have plugged into the radio using XM.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t really care.\u00a0 However, we got the download of the new Trampled Under Foot album.\u00a0 This meant we had to listen to it on the way back.\u00a0 We went through that album and several more on Rich\u2019s music player through the Aux input.\u00a0 It was a change and we got to listen to the TuF album in our own environment.\u00a0 It was great.<\/p>\n
When we first started out on the road, we heard a song called, Butter for My Grits<\/i>, by Big Bill Morganfield.\u00a0 Bill is one of Muddy Waters\u2019 sons.\u00a0 I loved that song.\u00a0 We decided to make it our theme song for the trip.\u00a0 I then attempted to get grits for breakfast or other meals just so we could say that.\u00a0 We heard that song over a dozen times in the course of our driving days.<\/p>\n
The song is about a guy who goes to eat his grits and finds that he is out of butter.\u00a0 He goes to the store, but they are out of butter.\u00a0 He goes to the neighbor\u2019s house, but they are out of butter.\u00a0 He just can\u2019t find butter for his grits.\u00a0 Just not a southern thing to eat grits without butter.<\/p>\n
I found out a lot of facts as we traveled also.\u00a0 Oklahoma raises the most horses and has the most horse related events than any state.\u00a0 Kansas has a lot of limestone and in the central section where the Tallgrass Prairie is, you can see a lot of stone fences.\u00a0 We had a couple of people arguing if they were walls or fences.\u00a0 Apparently in Kansas, they are fences.<\/p>\n
OK, I\u2019m winding down here.\u00a0 We got close enough to home to call Rich and tell him to get the party out of the house.\u00a0 We do this every time and you would think he would be used to it. \u00a0He just gripes at us.\u00a0 I think I heard something about grow up.\u00a0 Not sure though.<\/p>\n
We came up Oak behind the garage.\u00a0 Sascha was outside, but couldn\u2019t really see up until we got past the new garage that blocks her view of the road.\u00a0 She was pretty much just lying next to the house watching the world go by.\u00a0 Then you could see the thought go across her face, \u201cDaddy and Mommy are home!\u201d\u00a0 She pushed open the small door as I raised the big door.\u00a0 She was dancing and barking.<\/p>\n
Rich went to get his Husky hug.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t wait for my hug.\u00a0 I had some place I had to be and quick.\u00a0 I got my hug when I came out to help bring in the bags.\u00a0 She was so excited to see us.\u00a0 I think she was more excited to see Rich than me.\u00a0 After we got the stuff all in the house, I brought in.\u00a0 She attached herself to Rich for the rest of the night.\u00a0 She was on his feet, touching his foot at dinner with her paw, and leaning against him as he was working on a secret project.<\/p>\n
It was nice to be welcomed by one person.\u00a0 Rick just tells me he liked having the entire house to himself with the dog.\u00a0 Maybe we could go back out on the road.\u00a0 However, we did have to pay all of the bills and keep moving money to his account for food and necessitates.<\/p>\n
Did you wonder what happened to that Texas roadmap?\u00a0 I found in with some papers I had stuffed into my backpack.\u00a0 Oops!<\/p>\n
It\u2019s good to be home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We made it home.\u00a0 We were in no hurry again this morning.\u00a0 It\u2019s vacation, right?\u00a0 Our last day of lazy mornings and no need to be anywhere soon. I started out in the passenger seat.\u00a0 I wanted one good day to brown my right arm.\u00a0 Since I do a lot of the driving, my left […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6,12,13,14,15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2126"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2128,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2126\/revisions\/2128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}