Trip West - Day 2

Dan once again showed off his culinary skills, fixing up waffles and fresh fruit for breakfast the next day. It was even better than it looks.

The roads from Champaign, Illinois to Omaha, Nebraska have a lot of farms, as you can imagine. One of the cooler things was the wind farms of the Midwest.

You can see for miles and miles on the Plains. Occasionally, the rains fell at great distances, and we could see them, the rain sweeping in gigantic brooming actions, cleaning whatever was beneath them. Sometimes, if the wind blew right, I could smell the ozone from the rain.

The corn was up and growing, as high as my thigh by the Fourth of July. It's a good sign, but I suspect more rain would not be a bad thing. Sometimes, the little guys struggle.

The roads in Illinois seem to be cut at right angles, with long distances between crossroads, even longer between the towns. It could be monotonous, but the landscape is so vastly different from home, I was held in rapture.

 

The other huge difference is the horizon. In Pennsylvania, you never quite see it; it's hidden behind hills or trees most of the time. Out here, the sky scoops all the way down to kiss the Earth.

We also found some decently twisty roads. The roads have long sweepers, and it's a blast to just lean in and roll on the throttle. And, with virtually no traffic, throttle rolls were a not-infrequent occurrence.

 
This part of the trip was a mixture of the fresh and new...

And the old and decaying.

I was fortunate to be able to connect with my best friend from high school and his wife, who set up arrangements to stay with her parents near Omaha, Nebraska. "Ella" and Dwight were excellent hosts, and we had a great stay with them. We talked about farming, and Nebraska, and Kenya, and flying.  

 
I was extra fortunate, as I needed tools to to create a solution to my turn signal problem. It seems that my exhaust was pointed straight at the turn signal, and the length of the trip had actually melted a connector. Dwight had tools, and we got to work and created a fix.

Not the most elegant thing ever, but I was hoping it would hold.

And then it was time to turn in and call it a night as darkness descended upon Nebraska.

I settled in (again) under a quilt, grabbed some light reading, and sailed off to sleep.