Today while driving through Nebraska we saw some scattered storm damage. Our hotel in Lexington had been spared serious storminess last night as the line moving through the area parted almost exactly where we were. We saw lightning and had some rain, but I never heard thunder.
Tonight as we sit in our hotel room in Marshalltown, resting up from the longest day of driving yet on this trip (if it isn’t, it feels like it), Chris has a Des Moines TV station on, with non-stop coverage of storm activity in the southwestern quarter of the Hawkeye State. Almost all during the drive the sky has been overcast, and the air beneath the clouds has been too hazy at times to see more than a mile or two—in a part of the country where the horizon should be dozens of miles distant. It made the worst city smog I’ve ever seen look downright sparkly.
Twice on this trip we paid as little as $3.699 a gallon for regular—first at a tribe-owned truck stop south of Riverton, Wyoming, then at an Albertsons gas station in Laramie where we benefited from a no-card three-cent discount from the advertised price. Once we got to Nebraska, regular was firmly over $4 a gallon, but mid-grade was in the $3.70 neighborhood because of ethanol content. Corn-belt states like Nebraska and Iowa apparently exempt ethanolized gasoline from gas taxes.
What’s more, west of Des Moines I could have filled the tank with E85 for less than $3 a gallon—if only a 1998 Taurus were flex-fuel capable. (If somebody tells me now that it is, I’m going to cry.)
Tomorrow is a family day. Of my late dad’s three surviving siblings, two live here and my Uncle John will be 90 next month (which is a big part of why we included Marshalltown on this tour).
We expect to be home Tuesday. I wonder what it’ll be like not to live out of a suitcase?
