Our 9.5 hour drive took 14+ hours, and I still don’t know why. But we made it to Indianoloa, Iowa, and while I hoped to be more coherent this evening, that ain’t gonna happen, so let’s not even pretend. But I did find a way to download my photos!

Here’s my view of my husband’s big yellow butt that I wrote about yesterday:

You know how many anagrams you can make from the word “Penske”? Yeah, that many. I have all the words on the truck memorized, and will for the rest of my life.

Here’s what went on today:

5-year-old son woke up so disoriented that he hid in a closet for ten minutes until we lured him out with his new Star Wars underwear. He came out of the closet for Yoda. (Something about that sentence isn’t right, but I’m not sure what yet.)

My husband asked his phone how much road construction there will be after we funneled once again into one lane. It told him the next 3,000 miles were only one lane, but it lied–we had at least five miles of double lanes.

Thank goodness my 5 y.o. is enthralled by long trains and small cows and his new Webkind travel buddy: a gray-and-white koala he’s inexplicably called “Housebuilder.” Housebuilder is best friends with a Bop-It BB8 toy/game our friends gave us as a travel gift. My youngest left them alone in the van so they could eat in private. They sat on his blanket, but I have no idea what they ate while we had lunch at a Veterans’ Memorial park in Nebraska.

Below is my brilliant idea: We bought a ton of snacky foods, divided them, and put them in baggies with people’s names on them. Now each person can eat whatever they like during the trip without bugging anyone to reach into a bin to find something good. I’d show you a picture of mine, but it’s only full of gluten-free, high fiber nutrition treats because I already ate all of my Skittles.

When a person’s mind gets bored in Nebraska (about as dull as Wyoming, although my 13 y.o. asked to go back to Wyoming because he thought it was slightly more interesting) one starts to look for anything to think of.

But was I composing the prequel to my book series or contemplating the deeper meanings of the cosmos? No. I was obsessed with this trailer I was stuck behind for ten miles:

IT’S SO WRONG!

First, I spent three full minutes trying to understand “Dont dead, open inside,” until I realized they intended you to read it TOP to BOTTOM. Hey, this isn’t Japan, you know.

Next, WHERE’S THE FREAKING APOSTROPHE?! I got real close (probably too close) searching the sloppy font for it in the DONT, but it’s not there! I even took this photo while driving, looking for apostrophic evidence.

Then I spent the next five minutes running Mission Impossible/Wile Coyote scenarios in my mind as to how I could create a suspension bridge between us, take the Sharpie I had in the van, inch over to the back of the trailer, and FIX THE WORDS!

Then I spent the next too many minutes thinking, “Why would you put zombies in a nice trailer? Transport them in cattle cars–they won’t care: THEY’RE UNDEAD!”

Man, was I glad when that trailer pulled away.

The items in our trailer are slowly trying to escape. Can you guess what we’re transporting? Two of the pokey-outy-bits have me stumped, and I helped put the tarp on it.

There’s a particular bathroom at a gas station in Nebraska where the men’s urinal is unfortunately placed in relation to the door. Please don’t ask how I know that.

17 y.o. figured out how to take a picture!

He snapped this and smugly said, “Because of my skill in computer games, I can point and shoot just about anything.”

The reason I don’t have any pictures of the Welcome to Iowa sign is because while we were driving I asked him to open my gluten-free loaf of bread package, and the pressurized bag exploded on him as he ripped it open with his teeth, and he was momentarily overwhelmed by gluten-free gas just as we got on to bridge crossing the Missouri River. Seriously.

Announced on the radio by my husband: “It’s 100% today–every RV is driven by someone with a mustache.” Which sent me on another deep-thought adventure: Is it required that people grow a mustache BEFORE they purchase the RV, or does the RV then make people think, “I need a ‘stache to go along with this”? What about the women? These thoughts kept me going for nearly half an hour, I’m sorry to report.

Evidence that we’re getting closer to Ron Swanson territory. I’m waiting anxiously to find a “Food and Stuff.”

I didn’t need a sign to tell me this.

To pretend this trip is something of a vacation, we stopped in Winter Quarters, Nebraska, where Mormon Pioneers fled after being expelled from Illinois, and where they prepared to head to Salt Lake City. We had only an hour there, but realizing that we spent two days driving what took pioneers MONTHS to do was humbling and refreshing.

Here they told us that across the street was a burial ground of 300+ pioneers, more than half of them children who died along the way. Heck, we haven’t lost one of ours yet.

Then we went to take a picture of the tiny temple there and look at the cemetery, where we could read the names and ages of every last pioneer who died there.

Then I tried to take selfies of us in front of the temple.

My selfie skills are surpassed.

I don’t think people are looking. Let’s try that again.

Did someone get cut off? One more time:

I feel like people aren’t taking this seriously. Again?

Ok, something’s seriously wrong with my 13 y. o. He’s the one who thinks Wyoming was more interesting than Nebraska. See if you can pick him out.

It’s now after midnight, and tomorrow (today?) we hope to get somewhere in Ohio, hopefully before midnight. Good night.