You can never go home

Unless you’re moving across the country and happen to get to drive through your home. Then you can totally go home.

Let me just say one thing about Nebraska. Actually, let me just show you one picture from Nebraska which sums up my feelings about Nebraska:

Silly sign. You don't need to tell me I'm nowhere. I already knew.

It’s not really anything Nebraska did. It’s just that it’s between Colorado, which I like and where I have friends, and Iowa, my home state. Sorry, Nebraska. You’re my flyover state. Except that I have to drive through you.

We’ve spent the last few days in Iowa, enjoying being “home”. For those who think that our home state has little to offer, I have two arguments. One, Iowa is beautiful. Just look at this picture:

Two, Iowa has a fantastic state fair. The Iowa State Fair. Don’t believe me? Watch this. [Well, look at this, I guess. Watch this implies I have a movie, and I don’t.]

We have the best fried food!

 Double Bacon Corn Dog

 Deep Fried Snickers Bar

Deep Fried Ho-Ho

And, the greatest thing ever: deep fried butter on a stick!

We have the best contests! They should remind you of wholesome Americana. We have flower-arranging, photography, produce contests, livestock contests (we saw a new state record for champion boar!), 4-H, and many other exciting and family-friendly activities. Kamiah and I spent several hours admiring the many contest-winning whatnots. Nice things like this are why Iowans are so nice. We were all raised in an idealized version of 1940’s America.

We have educational programs! Like a whole row of animals, helpfully labeled with their breed and primary purpose. For instance, the pigs were separated by type and their use was listed as “pork”. Except one. One of them had it’s use listed as “meats”. Kamiah decided that one was the type of pig hot dogs come from.

Kamiah, seeing that this cow makes great burgers, shouted at it “Make me a burger!” It didn’t. The alpacas also didn't make her a sweater.

In addition to these fantastic things, you have the chance to see things you can’t see anywhere else:

The Iowa Pork Tent, or as I like to call it, the happiest place on earth.

The Butter Cow. It’s a cow, made of butter!

The Cy-Hawk Trophy. It’s the trophy awarded to the winner of the Iowa vs Iowa State football game every year. ISU won last year, so I got to get my picture taken with it. Go ‘clones!

Actually, I guess my whole argument could have been summed up with this picture:

Kamiah drinks the buttery remnants of the fried butter out of the paper tray. Iowa brought the world something so fantastic, it compelled my sister to drink sugary butter.

{missed} fields of opportunity

When I drive home to Iowa from Glen Ellyn, I always listen to "Iowa Stubborn" from The Music Man when I cross over the bridge at Burlington. It's my little Iowa ritual as I zoom over the Mississippi and under the sign that reads:

THE PEOPLE OF IOWA WELCOME YOU

Boy, when you type it all in caps like that, it looks scary, like we're part of Soviet Russia and have been told to be hospitable.

Today, we crossed the Iowa border from the west—from Nebraska, which wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. {I told a friend that, and she said that should be the state motto for Nebraska: Not as Bad as You Feared. She and I probably shouldn't be in charge of PR for a state we aren't from.}

In fact, the windy {very windy} plains of Nebraska made me want to read O Pioneers! again, and I haven't mentioned this yet, but I made reading selections for most of the states we're driving through on this trip.

For example: an excerpt from The Monkey Wrench Gang for Utah,

a poem about bronc busting for Colorado

and a selection from O Pioneers! for Nebraska.

This will come as little surprise to you, but Sid was not enthused by this idea of mine—this reading of literary excerpts and then discussing our interpretations and feelings over a cup of tea at a rest area.

However, I was driving Sid's car today and I didn't even bother to ask him if he would read Willa Cather to me. I knew that answer would involve words I don't like to type, much less say.

This brings me to my original point about Iowa: today, I also couldn't listen to "Iowa Stubborn" as we crossed the border because of Sid. He has a strict no musicals policy; just in case that had changed, I asked him about it when I got in the car this morning.

"Really, I promise you, this CD has just two songs from musicals on it. Can we listen to that?" I held out the CD I'd made for the road trip, the one called "On the Road Again" that features songs from every state we're driving through. I held it boldly, so as to better demonstrate that I wasn't lying about the musicals.

"No."

"Then can we listen to the Broadway station on your XM radio?"

"It's the craziest thing, but that station has been blocked. So has the 60s on 6 and the 50s on 5," he added quickly.

"I know you're lying to me, but I'm going to pretend like you aren't. You should probably call XM radio and let them know that you're missing those vital stations."

And to that, Sid harrumphed, sounding much older than a thirty something.

As I drove under the Iowa sign on the bridge between Omaha and Council Bluffs, I sang my Iowa song in my head and breathed in that fresh, farm-filled Ioway air.

And then briefly considered asking Sid if he would read the "Farmhouses, Iowa" poem I'd selected for the Great State.

If you want space, go to Utah...

But if you want reasonable temperatures and some trees to look at, go to Colorado.

The drive from Cedar City, UT to Glenwood Springs, CO is spectacular. I know because Kamiah and I spent a lot of time radioing Sid to tell him to look out various parts of the car so he could see something spectacular. The sheer scale of the land in southern Utah is astounding.

Kamiah and I have been here many time, but this is the first time I’ve driven it myself (my parents never let me drive the interesting bits – probably afraid I’d send the car off the edge or something) and it felt different. Kamiah felt it too. Like being adults has somehow deepened our appreciation of Utah’s beauty. Or maybe we’re really looking at it for the first time and not just thinking about how we can grub around in the dirt all we like and not have to shower for *days*. Hey, give us a break, we were kids!

We came over a crest at one point and found ourselves overlooking this:

Lucky us, there was a scenic viewpoint pull-off so we were able to get out and take a look. Kamiah, who is the designated sign-reader in our group, discovered that this was none other than the San Rafael Swell. This is our dad’s favorite place in the whole southwest United States, maybe the world! We’ve camped out there almost a dozen times and didn’t think it was all that great, but here we are, off on the side of the road because we just couldn’t drive past something so fantastic without stopping for pictures. Dad will be so pleased.

A family photo, just like Dad always made us take. Except that we’ve all had showers in these pictures. Showers were a luxury back in the day.

But really, how could you not want to stop and stare when you’re driving through things like this?

Our destination, Glenwood Springs, was the place we used to start and stop our month-long family camping vacations so of course Kamiah and I planned to do exactly what we’d done as children: check into the Hotel Colorado and then go swimming until dinnertime. How lucky is Sid to get to experience all this with us? Well let me tell you. Do you remember the face Sid was making about Shakespeare yesterday? He’s been making that face a lot.

In our defense, the pool at Glenwood is pretty fantastic. It’s part of a natural hot springs, so there’s a 104F giant “therapy” pool, and then a bathtub temperature even-gianter (that’s a word) regular swimming pool. Sid did seem to enjoy this bit, even though it doesn’t always look like it.

Kamiah the lap-swimmer showed us both up by actually exercising. You can see the end of the large pool to the right behind her.

Dinner was a local brewpub, and I can honestly tell you that this is the part of Glenwood Sid enjoyed the most. Guess why.

The Hotel Colorado is historic. It’s old, fancy…it’s the place they invented the Teddy Bear for President Roosevelt! It's beautiful and classic and doesn't have air conditioning. Sid was less than thrilled by the history Kamiah was trying to communicate to him, but he was terribly concerned about the lack of A/C. We did, however, have an experience we couldn’t have had at a La Quinta.

When we got back from dinner, a helpful stranger offered to take our picture on the settee (Kamiah was ecstatic) in exchange for being his audience for a bit as he played piano. Specifically, as he played Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”. This seemed like a fair trade to us. Turns out, he was fantastic, and the sound was so good it attracted others. Pretty soon we had a group of eight or so signing “Don’t Stop Believing” in the formal lounge area of a hotel built in 1893.

The picture Charlie took of us. Doesn’t Kamiah look elegant?

Charlie from Breckenridge plays Journey.

Can’t beat that with a stick.

Note: "If You Want Space, Go to Utah" is actually a song by Christine Lavin. My family has been listening to this song for years, it's on the road trip CD Kami made for this PCS, and we've been singing it pretty well nonstop. Sid is overjoyed.

driving through the rockies, thinking about vegas

This morning as we drove through tunnels blasted in the mountain and past Heartland Express semis {from Iowa City: how is it possible that they are everywhere we go?} and up to 11,000 feet in the Rockies, I was thinking about Vegas.

This is the wrong thing to be thinking about when you're driving past the Colorado River, but my other thought was: That river formed the Grand Canyon? Please, it's like a stream. That thing has nothing on the Mighty Mississippi.

{I was just tempted to call it the Mighty Mississip, a shortening nickname of laziness, as if by growing up next to it, I earned the right to call it something else.}

So it was either disparage the Colorado River or think about Vegas. And I'd rather think ill of Vegas than think ill of anything that is not Vegas. You may have noticed, but Oesa and I have very similar thoughts on that town, or as I like to call it: Vegas and Gomorrah.

As I said the other night, as we fought our way through the crowd coming out of the Celine Dion concert {my heart will go on} at Caeser's Palace, "My problem with Vegas is that it's a struggle to go anywhere. I just don't like fighting."

This is a very pacifist-sounding way of saying: I just don't like having all these people around me all the time.

But saying it that way makes me sound anti-social, and I'm not that. I do like people. I simply don't like so many of them around me, all so happy to be able to drink on the street and smoke indoors. Take that, laws that try to force us to be healthy!

I wrote a poem about Vegas today as a way to channel my hate. Hate always makes for good poetry; my English degree taught me that.

And you can read my hate-inspired poem of Vegas here. To entice you further to click on that link, I'll insert the beginning of the poem below. It'll be like a cliffhanger in a thriller novel, and you'll be compelled to turn the page, figuratively speaking, of course.

Like a plague sent as punishment,
it is raining in Las Vegas.

On the Luxor, raindrops slide down
the glass pyramid,
Nile rivulets marking riches and excess
Pharaoh himself would covet.

Farther down the Strip,

Ooh, cliffhanger. Read the rest.

all i owe ioway

In preparation for our joyful return to the state of Iowa tomorrow, I've been singing us the "All I Owe Ioway" song from State Fair.

And by "us," I mean Oesa and me: Sid will have none of my musical singing, even when I tell him the song is perfect for him.

For example, one of the lines is, "I owe Ioway for her ham and her beef and her lamb and her strawberry jam and her pie."

And Sid loves—really loves—meat. He loves it so much that this morning at the Hotel Colorado, he ordered the Teddy's Special Omelet. That would be Teddy Roosevelt, the Bully for You President who stayed at the Hotel Colorado while hunting bears.*

Teddy's Special Omelet had fried chicken in the omelet. I want to stress this so much that I bolded and italicized it. This ostensibly healthy breakfast choice—the benign omelet—was filled with fried chicken.

With a nod to some semblance of health food, it also had asparagus, but I think the fact that Sid ordered this omelet proves how much he loves meat.

Or maybe how much he wants to be Teddy Roosevelt and get to stay in the Roosevelt Suite at the Hotel Colorado instead of in our Premier Family Room with two bedrooms {that's right, people: I got my own room last night.}

Let's assume it's his meat-lover side—not his history-lover side—coming through, and tell him one more time that he should appreciate the song "All I Owe Ioway," especially when his sister-in-law is singing it.

I'm sure you all will appreciate this, so I've included a video of this song. I plan on singing it and other songs from State Fair while we're at the State Fair on Friday, admiring the butter cow and eating many fried things on sticks.

* Bonus historical information: the Teddy Bear was created at the Hotel Colorado. President Roosevelt had a particularly disheartening bear hunt—disheartening in that he didn't get to kill anything, which sounds rather heartening to me. The maids at the Hotel Colorado felt so sorry for him that they sewed him a little bear from scraps of cloth.

And that is how we got the Teddy Bear. These are the kinds of historical facts I share with Sid all the time, and he looks at me as if I were a bear he'd like to hunt.

Them’s the Breaks

Our first real drive of the trip (the trip doesn’t start until you have all the drivers, after all) was a short hop over to Cedar City, Utah, one of our favorite vacation destinations from our Walker family vacations. Why, you ask? Because every summer Cedar City is home to the Utah Shakespeare Festival! And really, what child wouldn’t love that? Kamiah and I wouldn’t know the answer to that because we were the children that did love it.

Cedar City is also near Cedar Breaks National Monument, which we headed up to just as soon as we checked into the hotel and got Romeo situated. We assumed he wouldn’t want to come because we were planning a two-mile hike and physical activity isn’t really Romeo’s thing. Cedar Breaks is great because it’s a smaller, less crowded version of Bryce Canyon National Park. If you’re not sure what that is either, then just look at the pictures below and you’ll see why this place is so great.

We discovered upon arrival that I could get a one year pass to all national parks, monuments, and forests because I’m active duty military. This may be the greatest perk I’ve gotten for my service!

Thank you Park Service!

 We have dozens of pictures of Kamiah and me in front of National Park/Monument signs as children. We'll just add this to the collection.

Yep, them's the Breaks. We don't remember if Dad said that or not, but he certainly would have if he'd thought of it. And he probably did.

Sid's photo skillz at work. 

 Kamiah admires the view as we take a break on the hike. We were 10K ft up - there were several breaks along the way.

Sid loves nature. 

 I like this one, so suffer through it.

 Sid conquers nature. I find this less disturbing than the loving nature.

 Fluffy marmot, or "Cedar Breaks Mountian Goat" as the sign told us, at the overlook we hiked to.

Kamiah takes a cartwheel picture everywhere cool we go. I think she does it just to rub it in that I couldn't do a cartwheel to save my life. Still, cool shot!

 Shot from the Visitor Center and overlook

After the Breaks, it was time for the main attraction in Cedar City: the Shakespeare Festival. Sid was, of course, excited to see The Merry Wives of Windsor. We tried to get him fired up for the play with a trip to Ye Olde Gift Shoppe (pronounced shop-ee) and then the pre-play Greenshow, featuring period-accurate entertainment but he just didn’t seem to get into the spirit.

Sid and Me with a statue of Falstaff, who featured prominently in the play we saw.

For the record, Sid did later admit that he enjoyed the play.

Viva Las Vegas! [Just don’t “viva” anywhere near me]

I don’t like Las Vegas. I went there as a child (8 yrs old, I think) and knew that as an adult, it was not a place I’d ever choose to go. Kamiah feels the same way, but ironically, is forced to go there for work roughly once a year. So why would we stop there?

Well, we had to stop in Las Vegas for several reasons:

1) It was convenient for Kamiah to fly there to meet us
2) It was the only convenient stopping point for the first leg of the journey
3) Sid hadn’t been there before and really wanted to go

So we really went because if we didn’t we’d only have to come back some other time and we’d be there for longer than 24 hrs. I had tried to explain to Sid that if LA wasn’t our speed, there was almost zero chance we’d like Vegas. But it is a spectacle, and such a cultural icon in America that he’d be missing out if he never saw it himself.

The first thing we noticed, aside from the phenomenal scale of the buildings, was the absolutely oppressive heat. Romeo and I had to drive around to the back of the hotel to park in the shade, and only after trying to stand as still as possible in the shade did I realize that 110F is that temperature where it doesn’t matter if you’re in the shade: it’s still blazing hot. We decided to chill (literally) in the hotel room until Kamiah arrived.

You see how the sun is mostly gone? It was still 101F when we took this picture on our way to get Kamiah.

Once Kamiah got in, we headed to the Cosmopolitan for dinner before our sightseeing. It was moderately priced for Vegas (according to Kamiah) but the food was fantastic. Kamiah got a pizza that had a duck egg cracked over it and spread around to cook. This was so good that after she had her first bite all she thought to say was “I want to hug this.” I believe that’s good.

After dinner we decided to try our luck at dollar slots, because they had the neat mechanical spinners and lots of flashing lights. Also because this is the only form of gambling we understand. The secret is to establish a spending limit before you start. For Kamiah, this was a dollar. For me, two dollars (because that’s what Sid handed me). On my very first try, I won $10! I cashed that out and then stupidly put my other dollar into the machine next to the first one and watched it disappear. I think that is the more typical gambling experience. I charitably split my winnings with Sid.

Kamiah tries her hand.

I win big.

Still high from our gaming success, we went to see the water show at the Bellagio, which was fantastic. It was also the last thing I think we truly enjoyed that night. For starters, the skies opened up on us and we had to rush to get into the Bellagio before the rain soaked us. This led to a confusing expedition through the casino trying to get from there to Caesar’s Palace. We finally made it outside (whew! Seriously, who makes a building that is *designed* to keep you inside? How does that work with the fire code?) and got across to Caesar’s. We only wanted to see the Shops with the neat sky-like ceiling and giant god-statues but we had to walk through the whole twisting, confusing casino to get there. And then we had to retrace our steps exactly to get out.

Go, water, go! It really was cool.

It was at this point that we realized none of us really enjoyed Vegas. Sure, the scale is phenomenal, and some of the attractions and buildings are cool (a pyramid? Really? Awesome!). But ruining all that, as they did LA, were people. They were everywhere. Want to cross the street? Stand in the this giant crowd. Want to walk 20ft over that way? Insta-crowd. I’m sure the crowded, deafeningly loud, supernova-bright Las Vegas Strip appeals to someone (it appeared to appeal to a lot of someones), but it sure as heck isn’t us.

 It’s pretty, but it’s no Eiffel Tower.

Do you know how hard we had to try to get this picture without someone walking in front?

So yeah, viva Las Vegas. Just “viva” as far away from me as possible.

flying into vegas

Since the last time I travelled across the country with Oesa and Sid—

Wait, let's pause here for a sidenote.

This is, yes, my second trip across the country with these two. It is my third move with them {the first being Iowa to Florida, also known as the "trip with the stop in Metropolis, Illinois to take a picture by the giant Superman statue"}. Now that you ask it, YES, I am going for Sister of the Year Award.

That's a thing, right?

Maybe it's just these past two weeks of watching too much Olympics, but I've been feeling an urge to be judged {no, not that kind of judged} in random areas of my life.

I pay my bills; I want a judge to hold up a 10.00, even if that score is no longer used in gymnastics, the only sport I really know.

I walk the little pug; I want someone to play "The Star Spangled Banner."

You see what I'm saying: please give me a a gold medal for taking my vacation to drive from Las Vegas to Rochester with these people.

And now, back to my original point: Since the last cross-country adventure, I have started my own blog. It's called Jane Austen Didn't Prepare Me for This, which is very witty if you know anything about me or like Jane Austen or are cool at all.

In the interest of cross-promotion and hoping to maybe get some of you to follow my blog, too {don't be scared off by the Jane Austen name! It's not all about books! I also tell funny stories!}, I'm going to do a little linking to my own posts from this, our Great Weaver Migration blog.

For example, today I wrote about my flight into Las Vegas. You should totally read that; just follow the link.

And then come back here and read stories of how three Iowans got along in Las Vegas.

So long, Stinktown!

OK, for those of you that are confused by the post title, it's from the Simpsons. An episode called "You Only Move Twice", which is one of my favorites. Look up the clip and you'll understand why I shouted this out my car window as I turned off the 110 for the last time.

This is a great day for the Weaver clan, as we are finally out of Los Angeles. There was plenty to do, and a lot to see, but there was this problem. Actually, about 12 million problems: people. We're just not people people, it turns out. There are no empty spaces in LA. My feelings about LA are well-captured in a song I've known for my whole life and listened to today as we escaped as fast as we could: LA Freeway by Jerry Jeff Walker. Don't feel bad if you don't know either the song or the artist. My family has...different taste is music.If you'd like to live a more complete life, you may listen to the song here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2zE9cot3jY&noredirect=1. I suggest you do so, and then imagine me belting out "If I could just get off of that LA freeway without getting killed or caught!" in the car with Romeo, who was fairly annoyed by the interruption to his nap.

It's been a hectic couple of days. The packers came on Wednesday and boxed up all our earthly possessions, the loaders came on Thursday and moved everything onto a huge moving truck, and on Friday I checked out of base and Sid checked us out of the house. Clearly, we need some downtime. Especially Romeo, who in between fretting about the movers, spent the last three days doing this:

It's tough being a pug.

This morning we took it easy, walked Romeo along a nice woodchip path in Manhattan Beach, and went to our favorite restaurant to get a drink and some food before we left town. Apparently, they are going to miss us too, because they brought us this fabulous collection of desserts on the house as a going away gift:

So after drinks, a pile of fries, and more sugar than you can shake a stick at, we took off for Temecula. Temecula is lovely and full of wine, and driving here rather than spending another night in LA allowed us to have dinner at a very nice winery, overlooking vineyards, and smelling desert rain.

This is pretty much the view we had with dinner. Just imagine an outdoor patio restaurant behind me.



We head to Las Vegas tomorrow, where Kamiah will join us for the second epic Weaver migration. Better get a good night's sleep! (Romeo has already started.) Tomorrow we officially start across the country.

Adventures in Los Angeles

Just so you know, that show Gangland on the History Channel is wrong. I'm sure there are gangs here, and I'm sure their numbers are legion, but every surface in LA is not covered in threatening turf-marking graffiti and not everyone here is trying to shoot me. Run me off the road maybe, but not shoot me. Now that that's settled, we can move on.

Thursday night we went to In-N-Out Burger, which of course we don't have in the Midwest. That's too bad too, because our Dad would love it. Dad talks longingly of the days when McDonald's served only burgers, fries, and soda and that's exactly what In-N-Out has! We each got a cheeseburger, shared some fries (those were especially good but I feel bad for the potato-peeling kid), and had milkshakes. All good. We'll have to make sure to take Dad to one so he can enjoy the simplicity of it.

Friday was Kamiah's last day out here, so we spent the day hitting some tourist highlights of LA, or at least the bits Kamiah wanted to see before heading back to the Great White North. First on the list was the Getty Museum. The grounds are lovely, but the view is...well, limited. See the contrast?

The Getty claims to be an art museum, but Kamiah read somewhere that it was really somewhere you could enjoy walking around while occasionally viewing some art if you felt like it. Turned out that was right. They have some lovely pieces, and we especially enjoyed the portrait exhibit but it didn't feel much like an art museum. So much the better for Sid! I'm not sure he enjoyed it quite like Kamiah did. They did, however, have a Monet painting of the cathedral at Rouen, where Kamiah used to live. We took her picture with it (what else to do when she's lived there?):

After that we drove along Sunset Blvd to gawk at rich people's houses. We saw Bel Air, prompting Kamiah to repeat parts of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme song (Sid secretly enjoyed that, I'm sure) and then turned down Beverly Dr to look at some more accessible rich people's houses. We could even get out and walk around there without getting the bum's rush! But I have to say the signs in some yards warning of an armed response to intrusions did kind of say "Get out!"

Last on the list was Hollywood (of course). We slowed foot traffic staring at stars on the street, and annoyed Sid was calling out the names we knew as we found them, and looked at all the handprints and signatures in front of Grauman's Theater. These are for Mom and Dad:

That was a pretty full day of sightseeing (and driving - driving takes a lot of concentration here and is therefore tiring) so we relaxed at the house a bit before we met Aunt Pam and Uncle Rich for dinner. They live down in Fountain Valley, not too far away! It's nice to have some family close again. Added bonus, to get to dinner we got to drive over a bridge we'd all been staring at since we got here. It's huge and runs over the harbor here (we're next to the Port of LA) and at night they light it up with blue lights. This also allowed us an up close view of a shipping yard and about 3 billion shipping containers. Whoo hoo?

In closing, LA is pretty great. Lots to do, and no one has tried to shoot us. Yet.