To the east

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Lots and lots of nothing. That was today. We drove, for 10 hours, seeing nothing but fields. One segment was almost 400 miles, another more than 150. There was little exciting or special.

We did stop by Sioux Falls for lunch, where we got sushi. Walking out, Serena and I went to the car, turned around, and Laura and Amit were gone. We spent 15 minutes looking for them and it turns out Laura was craving ice cream and just headed across the road, no warning. And then they were just waiting over there. There's a small chance I may have driven over to get them, and then driven off as they reached for the door. Eye for an eye?

Anyway, we got in late, but did finally get to our Airbnb. For this city, Serena and I are staying at a B&B while the others stay with friends. The B&B is GORGEOUS. It's an old Georgian-style with a lot of history. The house itself is on the National Register of Historic Places, and it's seen its share. It was owned by Eugene Carpenter, a logging magnate who had seen his last city collapse into nothing after the logging industry left. He didn't want that to happen here, so he talked to others, including his architect, and realized the way to get people to stay was with culture. So he gathered a bunch of his friends and raised an absurd amount of money - I don't remember the amount, but it was the largest single-event fundraiser ever. Only one of his friends knew much about the arts, though, so the rest of them, including him, went out to meet with artists and painters and curators and learn about art and buy art. They started trying to one-up each other until one of them bought a Rembrandt self-portrait. Not that they stopped there, it's just hard to one-up that. By the time they were done, they had a clearly impressive set of art, and they put it all together (except for one guy - the one who knew about art - who decided to open his own museum) in a still-free museum. The day it opened they had 85,000 visitors, still a record for a museum opening. Quite a story.

Anyway, the house, as you'd expect, is immense and beautiful. We're staying in one of the rooms on the top floor. Probably a servant's room, but it's too nice to care. This is a place I could happily just move in and live!

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