Grinnell, Iowa to McMurray, PA: August 6, 2008 - Day 31

---

Travel lesson of the day: Driving across country changes your perception of distances.

from Kathy:

I wake to see the sun shine at that August angle that signals the fall season. No matter how old I get, this first signal of summer’s end is always a sober one. Leaving Grinnell at 10 a.m., the urge to make phone calls takes over. First, I call the school guidance counselor, then the barber who cuts Scott’s hair, and the pediatrician. I am setting up appointments for next week—but wait a minute, that means we’ll be home in a week.

Question: How can I be in Grinnell, Iowa and expect to be home in anything less than a month or two?

Answer: It’s all so much closer than I thought.

Question: You mean Iowa isn’t that far from Connecticut?

Answer: I guess not.

Driving across country changes your relationship with distance.

I realize that I have become accustomed to endless motion, but it is ending. If this trip was a coloring book, I had filled in most of the pages. It was time for a new book.

A coloring book, by the way, is not a bad analogy for the road travel experience. Hundreds of places had just been dots on a pastel map. Now they are “colored in” with real people, buildings, names, sites, and landscapes.

Another analogy is that of unfolding a pop-up birthday card and seeing a scene spring into 3-D. The earth is less flat for me than it used to be.

And so we begin at odometer reading 6936, gas up at $3.63 per premium gallon. (Premium is less expensive in Iowa, too.) Outside my window, Midwestern town names go by. There’s Iowa City and then Davenport, Iowa where we cross the Mississipi River. For unusual names, there are “What Cheer” and “North English,” IL. There’s Kickapoo, IL, which reminds me of L’il Abner and Kickapoo Joy Juice. How about those signs to Kankakee, IL? My inner ear hears Arlo Guthrie singing “… the train pulls out of Kankakee” in The Train They Call the City of New Orleans. Later we drive by the town Groucho Marx made famous with the phrase “Will it play in Peoria?”

There are windmills in Illinois, the farthest east we’ve seen them. And there are state road signs for “Off Track Wagering.” Didn’t someone famous once say A wager by any other name is still a bet ….

Route 70 takes hold of our tires at 6:45 p.m., now back in good ‘ol Eastern Daylight Time for the first time in a month.

As a kid growing up in the Pittsburgh, PA area, I thought Iowa was at least two planets away. It is, in fact, 761 miles away. I know this because after 13 hours of driving, we find my dear mother, AKA Gram-Gram, asleep on her McMurray, PA, porch swing, awaiting our 1:15 a.m. arrival. My dad is asleep in his granddad-chair. The odometer reads 7697

As I lay down that night in a bed familiar from years of hometown visits, I realize that the part of the excursion that merited blogging had ended. So ends the journal, except for some lists and reflections that I’ll share in the next entries.

Thanks for sticking with us.

---

Photos

Sun Sets on the Connolly US Road Trip
After we reached my family's home near Pittsburgh, I realized that the trip was coming to an end. We spend four days in the 'burgh and then make the final push towards home on August 11.

Three at the Badlands
One of our top visits, the Badlands are definitely on the "I'd go back again" list.

The Driver
Paul drove the entire 8400 miles except for one hour in Ohio.

Comments

[joe connolly]

thanks for the memories
that's a beautifully written ending. and it's a goopd picture of Paul. Thank you for writing this blog. We enjoyed it, Joe and Katherine

[Connolly US Road Trip]

A bit more to come . . .
Thank you, too ... for reading. There will be one more entry where we summarize the best and brightest and most recommended, the facts and stats, etc ....