Iowa!

After leaving North Platte, we continued east into Iowa. What a lovely surprise Iowa is. With its rolling green hills and prosperous-looking farms, it is "easy on the eye," a description we've always given to its neighbor, Wisconsin. We stayed last night with friends from long ago, Michael and Catherine, who we first knew when they met one another as young assistant professors at UW Oshkosh. They were only in Oshkosh 2 years, but we have stayed in contact since they left. They returned to Appleton less than a year after they left Oshkosh when John performed their wedding. Kate, Colin, and their friends from California were the only other people present at the wedding. We've been in the same house since they were married, but they've lived in at least 5 other places before settling in Des Moines where Michael is Provost at Drake University and Catherine in about to start a job as a statistician for a research group at a local hospital. Along the way, two lovely children have entered their lives (their daughter is 20, their son is 10) and it was a great joy to be with them last night.

Today, we left Des Moines and continued east. About an hour into the trip, we remembered with great fondness having had a lunch with Kate and Colin at a Maid-Rite restaurant in LaCrosse about 20 years ago, Maid-Rite being an Iowa chain restaurant started in 1926. Think of ground beef, lean and tasty, mixed with relish and a bit of mustard, all falling out of the bun (they give you a plastic spoon to scoop it up). Thanks to 21st century technology (our "smart phones"), we learned that there is a Maid-Rite in Dubuque, a city we expected to pass through around lunch time. We programmed the GPS for the Dubuque Maid-Rite and each had a delicious Maid-Rite sandwich. Made right. Twenty years ago, we were fascinated with how they cooked the hamburger and separated out the fat on a slanted cooking surface. Now they have some "new fangled" device to do that and as far as we could tell, it tastes just as good. This is

Kay, who remembers the old days, standing with the new equipment.

From Dubuque, it was an easy journey to Mineral Point and the Redwood Motel where we think we are one of two guests staying for the night. It's a bargain--clean, free Wi-Fi, and a great view of a meadow and birch trees. We plan to go out outside tonight to sit on one of their benches by the meadow and have a last sip to celebrate this wonderful road trip.