Getting out and about

Our trip west had a lot of firsts for me. I've never driven on land farther then Holmes County, Ohio. I've flown to Chicago, IL and and spent one short evening downtown and I've flown to IN and have seen how flat their state is. Our family, minus one son who was on a missions trip, drove to Minnesota one year to help with a Bible school camp. The fog was so thick you could barely see past the guard rails the morning we drove across the Machinaw bridge..... I was so looking forward to that view but at least we were able to see the landscape of a few others states besides our own that trip.

So when plans were made for us to drive from PA to MT I was thrilled because of finally having the chance to see other states. Our goal was to travel the first day to the other side of Chicago and find a place to stay so as to miss the next morning rush hour traffic. After one wrong turn (my fault) through some major construction we found ourselves in a very congested downtown area where it seemed everyone was walking towards a large fair/carnival. We rolled our windows down to catch the sounds of a band blaring and the smells of fair food. Again the city seemed to be in the throes of construction. But we were able to get on the other side of Chicago for the night. The next morning we left early and headed toward Ohama, NE.

We saw windmill after windmill. At one point there was so many in view it was impossible to count. They were stretched across the landscape as far as the eye could see. I stopped counting at 50 and knew I had only scratched the surface.

We have a few of these windmills in PA and they hold a strange fascination for me. We also passed a few tractor trailers hauling the loooong blades headed somewhere to set up more.


But much of our sights that day looked like this....miles and miles of farmland.

This next photo is extremely poor. But it's the only one I have that isn't a complete blur. I want to know why many of the barns across the midwest seem to have a little shed sitting on top of them. Big barns had bigger sized sheds. Little barns had smaller sized sheds. (One theory - it's the doghouse the farmer gets sent to for not taking his boots off after the wife just finally got the floors looking clean again.)

Hotel accomodations for the meat convention where at the Ohama Hilton

right beside the Quest Center Omaha, a giant convention building.

The front desk at the Hilton told us we would need to park the trailblazer and UHaul across the way a little distance from the hotel but the head valet was kind enough to send us over to the Quest parking area where we were able to park the UHaul trailer inside a gated, guarded parking lot. We didn't ask for this kind gesture. It was another lesson from God telling me I simply need to trust His care for me. I tend to worry about things that I really don't need to. He had it all taken care of.