| Some things just catch you by surprise. Like this huge arch
across the road. We think it was part of an adventure playground. And we
think it was near Kearney, Nebraska. But by this time we were beginning to
become numbed to the endless miles of flat uninteresting road. Quite
dangerous really because your attention wanders. |  |
 | There was
little of significant interest in the roads as we travelled across Nebraska,
Iowa, Illinois and Indiana. The desert changed gradually to farmland with
endless fields of corn and wheat. We had decided to largely travel on I80
and this is a long straight four lane highway populated by trucks and with a
mostly indifferent surface. There are few large towns and just a few small
communities who do their best to relieve the monotony by painting their
water towers as here at the town of York, Nebraska, a small town just before
Lincoln, which isn't much bigger. This is really a catchall page for a
period when we took few photographs. We stopped overnight at Neola, Iowa,
just past Council Bluffs, which is the Iowa part of Omaha, Nebraska. Then we
stopped at Geneseo which is just inside Illinois and close to the Quad
Cities area (see the page on John Deere at Moline). Earlier that day we had
passed through Des Moines where Bill Bryson was born (well, someone had to
be, to quote him). Then we stopped at Kewanee, Illinois. This was a short
day since we had stopped at Moline, and then we got lost on the I80 (yes, it
can be done - and easily) and ended up on the I74 heading for Peoria. The
next day we stopped in Elkhart, Indiana and spent a few hours in the RV
surplus stores buying odd items to repair worn bits of RV. Finally we
stopped at Avery, Ohio, halfway between Toledo and Cleveland. |
| Many of the states are separated by the major rivers as here
where the Mississippi separates Illinois on the far side and Indiana, from
where this shot is taken. The building just left of centre on the far bank
is the Illinois visitor centre and this shot is taken from the Indiana
equivalent. |  |
 | The
last day of our cross-country trip brought us to Cleveland, Ohio, which took
us past Sheffield, the original home of the RV. The I90 does some strange
convolutions through the city but we did get this shot of the skyline. |
| Cleveland shoreline has a few museums some of which are floating
as with this Great Lakes tanker. After the dismal weather we had had on some
parts of the trip from the west, this day was absolutely glorious. |  |
 | All the big
cities have their sports stadium and this is the one in Cleveland for the
Cleveland Browns (I've no idea why). It is a huge edifice on the waterfront
and surrounded by car parks which were empty (until 1730hrs). The Great
Lakes Science Museum was next door and this housed the Body Worlds 2
exhibition. |
| Photography was not allowed inside the exhibition so we bought
the book and the video. But in the foyer were this adult and young camel.
The bodies are real and after dissection are plasticised by a process
developed by a German, Gunter von Hagens. The exhibition has been shown
around the world, invoking praise and condemnation in equal parts. We were
surprised to see it in America, given the strength of the right wing church.
It has apparently been banned in Florida but Ohio is a little more liberal. |  |
 | The exhibition
is quite fascinating with some bodies split apart as these camels are, and
with others sliced up to show the location of various bits of the body. Some
of the bodies were diseased so you could see the effects eg of smoking and
obesity. There was also a set of embryos showing the development at various
stages. I may add some more pictures later if I can extract them from the
sources I now have. |
| And so we arrived back at our base in Springville, New York
State. We just had a few days to visit friends and gather ourselves before
we head for Canada. The scooter needed minor repairs, the RV needed a wash
and a service and we had some paperwork to collect and sort out. We also
suffered the ministrations of the category 5 hurricane Katrina. This made
landfall with 160-190 mph winds and a 25ft storm surge on the Gulf Coast at
New Orleans in Louisiana. Now that is 2,000 miles to the south! The first
effect was that all the warm air from the Gulf was pushed north and the
humidity went through the roof. Then we got about 4 inches of rain! (but
virtually no wind). It had been dropping water all the way up the US so I
cannot imagine what it must have been like when it came ashore. New Orleans
is actually below sea level and surrounded by levees. These were breached
and at the moment the city is under water. Parts of the local interstate
were wiped out when the bridge was demolished by an oil rig and a floating
casino. There are about 4000 oil platforms in the gulf in the path of this
storm. They reckon that 25% of the country's oil will have been temporarily
stopped. This is causing the oil price to rocket. The price of petrol has
gone up 25% in the last six months and it is already causing political
problems. It is still a lot cheaper than ours.
So to Part Two. There will be no updates for the next month because we
have not enabled our phone to work in Canada. That would have required a new
contract with a new minimum period of a year. As things stand our current
contract expires when we leave the US. But you will be able to see what we
found in Canada from October onwards - if they allow us back in . | . |
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