Friday, May 20, Omaha, Nebraska

     Well, we have seen him.  Not Big Ben, which is, of course, a clock, but Old Ben which I mistakenly mislabeled.  Believe me, he could have rightfully have been called Big Ben…he weighed 4720 pounds and that's a lot of bull.  In the building next door to Ben is the stump, which is claimed as the world's largest Sycamore stump having a 23 foot circumference.  It was estimated to be 800 years old before the tree blew over in a storm.  And, we got to see the rest of Kokomo, which is only minimally impressive.  The Beach Boys, in their song about Kokomo, as it turns out were referring to a place, not in Indiana, but someplace off the Florida Keys.  Somebody should have told me that before I drove 200 miles out of my way to see it!  Actually, all in all, it was worth the trip out of our way and we're not complaining.

     West Lafayette, Indiana, home of the Purdue Boilermakers, was right on our way back north toward Interstate 80, so we drove around the campus a bit.  I hadn't been there since I finished my master's there in 1967.  There was almost nothing in West Lafayette that I recognized; most of the current campus wasn't even there when I left it 47 years ago and anything that wasn't new I seemed to have forgotten.  It was a little disappointing.

     From there we traveled due west on Rt. 24 crossing into Illinois.  We spent last night in a tiny town near Peoria called Chenoa and this morning headed north to get back onto I-80.  It was great to get off the interstate for a day and to pass through some of the small towns that make up rural Indiana and Illinois.  The farmland is unbelievable…beautiful freshly plowed fields, on both sides of the road, for as far as the eye can see.  The landscape is dotted with farm houses and barns that all seem to be well cared for, freshly painted with neat yards and flower gardens, and a noticeable lack of old cars, rusty farm implements and other junk laying around that I seem to see on most farms in my neighborhood.

     Once back on I-80 and heading west, we crossed into Iowa.  We were surprised at how the terrain changed from the very flat farmland of Indiana and Illinois to hilly countryside in Iowa, especially as we went further west.  There are still plenty of huge corn fields, one after another, but it's all up and down rather than on a plane.  We try to stop from time to time at rest areas, not only to do the obvious, but also to spend twenty minutes or so exercising.  We stretch and then walk around the complex a few times at a brisk pace.  Doing that three or four times a day makes a surprising difference in our energy level.  As we were zipping along the interstate, I happened to notice a sign for Grinnell, Iowa and remembered that our friend David Flood who lives in Hawaii, graduated from Grinnell College, as did David's son, Brian.  It was time to exercise, so we drove into town and walked around the small campus, stopping in the bookstore to pick up a post card to send to David.  He's always on my case because I never write so he'll be presently surprised.  Marcella also took my picture in front of Carnegie Hall, the college library, which was funded by Andrew Carnegie in 1905…so I guess there are two of them.  I wanted to go inside and sing a song so I could say I sang at Carnegie Hall…Marcella vetoed the idea.

     Finally, after driving through more torrents, we have arrived in Omaha, Nebraska where we'll spend three nights.  We crossed off two more states today that we hadn't been in before, Iowa and Nebraska.  Only Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Montana, and Oregon to go and we will have been in all fifty.  We drove almost 500 miles today, so we're a bit tired.  We're meeting our friend, Bill Witty, tomorrow morning after breakfast.  I wonder if any of us have changed in the last 32 years.  Bill has a full day of activities planned for us so I'd better hit it.  Nite-nite.