People sending pics

Our writing on the car has been working (a bit).  We've had 5 people send pictures and comments to our email. It's a lot of fun to sign in every evening and see if there are any responses.  One person is on her way to a Mrs America contest in Dallas! Good luck to her.

Iowa

Iowa was such a surprise.  What a beautiful place!  I'd really like to go back and get off the main highway at some point. We were East Coast snobs and laughed at the "cities" but everyone admired the landscape.  Kind of reminiscent of France except everything was corn instead of grapevines.
We've decided to run an experiment when we get out west: in honor of all those who have told us about their family trips, we're going to turn off all electronica, turn off the a/c, open the windows and maybe sing a song or two and see how long we can last without killing each other. I'll let you know how that goes.
Great barbecue last night in Omaha.  Way too much food but we thought we were starving. This looks like a pleasant place, too.  I'm eager to see the old market area. The Missouri is definitely over its banks; there were highway closure signs and we passed a restaurant whose back deck was under water but whose front deck still had people dining (must be a good spot!).

Day Two

day two, and roughly 11 hours of driving, is over. And I am officially amazed at how long I can sit and do nothing without going insane (or at least I think I'm still sane...?) I dont know, but to me, I feel like I shouldn't be watching a movie at 1 when its nice and sunny out, so I plugged in my earbuds to my computer and listened to cds (until my battery died and then i used my ipod)and looked out the window at the scenery going by. I watched as the forest-y hills got smaller and ended up nearly flat farmland growing corn, wheat, and idk what else. What I found funny was that most farms had random clumps of forest in them, just all flat but one little blob of trees... Oh well :P It was pretty disorienting how the weather changed as we drove by. We experineced: perfect blue clear skies, partially cloudy skies, fully cloudy skies, light rain, and thunderstorms (and not in that order either!) It was also weird when we switched to central time... Oh look, its 6---again. The couple times we stopped I felt the utmost dread at entering the car again. NOOOOO not AGAIN, not for a nother 8 HOURS!!! But really, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Actually, one of the things that bothered me the lack of getting things done. I literally wasted the entire day doing absolutely nothing and getting nothing done. There's not much to get done in a car for 11 hours... Well, looking forward to hanging out a bit in chicago today before the 7 hour ride to nebraska, see you later ~cc

Note from Anna

This road trip is making me so tired. We get to the hotel at around midnight, I fall asleep between 12:30 and 1, and then I am awakened by eight.  Just to add to the schedule everyone (aka Alex) keeps yelling at me to get up, even though I've been awake for longer than he has. In his mind, getting up means not only being fully awake, but out of bed and dressed for the day. Also, if there are any more days like last night, it will take over an hour to arrive at our hotel, which I thought was going to be a mere 5-10 minutes. Fun!

Chicago

Is it the long plane trips we've taken that have made the kids such good travellers? Yesterday was a long drive (PA, OH, IN, IL) but it was pretty uneventful.  Three movies (thanks, Donna), some travel games (thanks, Lisa), Wii (thanks, Rich) and DS helpes pass the time.  Rich actually let me drive a little bit so don't believe him if he says he drove the whole way...it's not like I haven't been offerring.
We're going to hang around Chicago today for a bit before heading off to Omaha.  Me, I could skip the city but I'm really looking forward to driving through Iowa and Nebraska. Is it possible for the midwest to seem exotic?
Cecilia keeps shaking her head and laughingly saying, "I still can't believe we're actually doing this!"
Oh, we've also decorated our car.  It says (among other things) Have you seen us? Snap our pic and send it to lrcaat@gmail .com. CT to Grand Canyon  Two people have responded but several more have slowly driven by, taking our picture and waving.