On Our Way to Tacoma

Our trip so far….

This epic voyage began Wednesday, July 16, when Cliff and “Chicken Little” left Lexington with a goal of the national CORSA Convention in Tacoma, Washington with return route including Route 66 through the Southwest.

The first stop was dinner with an old friend, Scott Trunkhill in Iowa City. After spending the night in Cedar Rapids, IA, the site of the 2010 national convention, it was on to Rochester to meet up with Dave and Ina Keillor. The drive through northern Iowa and into Minnesota was nothing but miles and miles of cornfields. Then there was the occasional cattle car. Man, I don’t know when I’ve smelled anything that strong in my life. Staying ahead of them became the challenge of the day.

After arriving in Rochester, I spent the afternoon getting reacquainted with Dave and Ina. I met the two of them years ago at a performance workshop in Dayton, Ohio. Dave had been working on a 65 Monza that he and Ina sold to her brother back in 68. They re-acquired the car in 2004 and have done an incredible job of turning “Mr. Redd” into a beautiful example of what Chevrolet could have done with the car if they had wanted to.

Meanwhile, Beth was in Atlanta for the XSEDE conference. She will have to tell you what that stands for. I picked her up in the airport at 5:30 on Thursday. This is where things began to unravel. You can see from the photo that the airport isn’t very large. In fact, I’ve been in mall parking lots that were bigger than this. I got all turned around as we were leaving and for a split second, it looked like we were going to get hopelessly lost. Man, if I can’t get out of this parking lot, what business do I have traveling cross country? But, we finally got out. Thank goodness for the peanut trail

On to I-90!

Windmills!

Gas at a Sinclair station

Badlands

Sunset

Then on to Wall, SD

Saturday morning we visited Wall Drug in Wall, SD – billboards advertise “Free Ice Water!” “5 cent coffee!” and what got Cliff: “Homemade donuts!” famous since the 1930s.