Midwest Roadtrip

One of the offices that my mom works with is in Omaha, Nebraska. She had to go down for a few days and invited Jeff and I to come. Since he and I have never really done a road trip in the Midwest, we decided to check it out. She was going for a full week, so we thought we'd leave a couple days later. That meant we had to rent a car one way from Minneapolis to Omaha.

Our adventure began around 11am today, when we walked to the Avis rental place in Maplewood Mall (about a mile from my house). Then we spent the next 6 hours in the car. Pretty much all the scenery looked the same. Cornfields as far as the eye could see.

We considered stopping for food in Des Moines, Iowa, but were indecisive. Once we got a little past it, Jeff decided that he really would like to grab some fast food next time we pass a McDonald's or something. It turned out the next time we'd pass a McDonald's would be in two hours when we arrived in Omaha. Ah well, won't make that mistake again.Determined Driver - I went 6 hours without stopping.

On the way we listened to McCain and Obama speeches played repeatedly on NPR, and then listed to Bill Bryson's "The Lost Continent" on CD. (We picked up some books on tape from the library before starting our trip.) The book was actually about Bill Bryson's trip back to the home to the United States after living in the UK for 10 years. His hometown? Des Moines, Iowa. So we drove through the great plains listening to Bill Bryson complain about the emptiness and monotony of the Midwest. He's a bit negative for my taste, but it was still a pretty entertaining book.

We got to Omaha around 6pm and had dinner in the Old Town area at Upstream Brewery, which was pretty nice. I'm actually fairly excited to explore the city tomorrow, and I'm sure I'll take lots of pictures.