You Can't Get An Education Like This In School

We are in Des Moines, Iowa after 29 hours of solid drive time. Everyone is well. We learned a lot along the way.

Our trek started leaving Las Vegas at 10:30am on Tuesday. First stop, St George, Utah. It is such a beautiful city, with the red sandstone cliffs as the backdrop for the stark white church. It just takes your breath away when you come over the hill and see it.

All of Utah is like that. Everywhere you look there are geological wonders.

Magestic buttes that appear to rise right out of the desert floor. I love, love, love Utah.

The San Rafael Swell is a desolate and remote area mostly known as the place of no return if you forget to get gas before you leave Richfield. We made that mistake in our motor home once and limped in on fumes.



If you are afraid of heights, watching your children near the edge of a drop-off will cause you to lose years off your life.

I had to pry Amanda away from the Native Americans selling jewelry here.

Check out Greg's pantry.

We finally made it to Colorado at 8pm.



We fed and watered everyone and visited the Western Slope Vietnam Memorial Park.



Then we got everyone ready for bed and they were asleep in 20 minutes of this picture, so Greg decided to drive straight through the Rockies. I was really disappointed that we can't seem to get our timing right to hit the Rockies in daylight.

We did pull over at some point and Greg slept for about an hour. I kept sleeping until our British GPS guy, Tomtom, started telling Greg, "Turnaround and go back on the motorway. Don't blame me if you get lost."

Greg had missed the turnoff to go to I-76 to hit I-80. After we got that all sorted out and back on the right destination, I fell back asleep and next thing I knew, we were in Nebraska.

The kids woke up at 6am, which was 4am Vegas time and when we let them out of the car in the Central Platte Valley of Nebraska, they went running like wild Indians.



An elderly man with overalls and his wife stopped to find out what all the ruckus was. You don't see people wearing overalls in Vegas.



I told them the kids had been in the car for nearly 24 hours, so they were a little antsy. I got a God Bless you out of that encounter.

We stopped for McDonald's at 6:30am and all the farm men were gathered around having breakfast and coffeee and talking about mowing and getting bee stings.

Totally different crowd than a McDonald's at 6am in Vegas.

I ate a sausage and a scrambled egg, which was the only protein I'd had so far on the trip. I feel like I'm on Survivor, trying to eat gluten free.

Then Nebraska sort of just flew by and then we were in Iowa.



Which looks like more of Nebraska, but is really, really green and beautiful. I love it.



The kids love it. We stopped at one rest area and picked and ate plums and wild rasberries. I told you it was like Survivor. I will forage for food if I have to.



So that's where we are at. We plan to have a short travel day tomorrow and hook up with Greg's old football buddy in Ottawa, Illinois and stay there until Saturday.

I told Greg I want to go back on I-90 and do Mt. Rushmore and maybe swing up to Yellowstone.

"Are you high? I can't drive like this anymore. I'm taking a plane home.", he told me.

Sure he can. This is the best education about America that these kids could ever get. I love America. Twenty nine hours in the car is worth it to show these kids what a great country they live in.

I'm like totally high, I guess.