Day 12, 13, and 14: The Long Road Home

Day 12: South Dakota to Iowa/Illinois

  I got excited when I saw that the hotel had a buffet section in their breakfast line-up.  They had some eggs and a few other things but no paper bacon.

  I don't know why, but for some reason Jim and Heather are only around for the Geocaches that take forever or that I can't find.  They are never there for the ones I can find pretty quickly and easily.

  I was running out of yarn too quickly to finish the hat, or even get as far as I would want to get to before joining some of the yarn I have at home.  I spent around forty minutes taking out about two thirds of what I've done.  I had heard it was really hard to tink back brioche, so I thought I was going to have to start all over again, but as I was pulling it out I started to see how it was laying.  It took a bit of fiddling at the end, but I was able to save all of the increases.

  Since we have seen so many cows on this trip, Jim wanted steak for dinner.  I got the soba noodles at 1/2 Nelson.  It was really good, even though the steak strips were overcooked.

  After dessert I left Bill with Jim at the Armored Garden to have a few beers.  I went to see if I could get a web-cam Geocache.  I wanted a really cool one for my 100th cache.  The timing was interesting.  The time stamp on the feed said it updated on the 10s, but I was there for it and it either took the picture earlier or a bit after because I didn't show up for a few tries.  Eventually I was in the picture, it shows me looking at my phone, but at least I'm there.

Day 13: Iowa/Illinois to Ohio

  There was another light show outside where the lighting was mostly behind the clouds.  Our room might also have been haunted because around 4:10am, all the lights in the bathroom turned themselves on.  I should have asked the ghosts to turn them back off, but I just did it myself.

  Our hotel had a breakfast buffet for $10.99.  I commented that it would hopefully have some really good food for that price.  Bill said that it's just the regular Hilton breakfast food.  I commented that it cost a lot and he jokingly said that it was all you could eat.  I had to point out that all of them were like that.

  Nothing too interesting for lunch.  Just got some easy rest-stop food.  A bit down the road from lunch we saw someone with a giant Clydesdale statue on a trailer heading the other way.

  It's been a while, so we went to visit Bill's mom, his siblings, and some of the animals.  It was really nice to visit with them and Bill has been invited back to work on some of the things that need to be fixed around the house.

  Since I was nervous about running out of knitting on the trip I always left it in the car.  That way I only worked on it during the boring bits and also to try and keep me from staying up too late at night.  Tonight was the first time I brought the knitting into the room.  I tried to start this cowl twice and kept having a twist in my first row.  I just wanted to be able to get it joined and possibly the first row done.

  It is a thinner yarn than I thought, so I might even get more than one project out of the skein.  I really like the yarn and will be considering getting more once I work through some of my stash and have room for it.

Day 14: Ohio to home

  I had suggested we go to Skyline Chili, however, none were convenient to where we were staying.  They really need to open some in a few more convenient locations, like down the street from my house.  I know Bill was tired so I didn't press it.  I might have to take a Skyline Chili road-trip before too long.

  I don't know if I have just missed these before, because they look like a handicapped stall from first glance.  This is really smart because then you don't have the problem of trying to get two people into one small stall and if the child is skilled enough, they can do everything themselves.

  Here is everything from the trip.  The top green and purple hat was mostly done when we left.  I just need to weave in some ends and I'll be done with the hats.  I'm also thinking of making another one like the bottom purple and green hat.  I used the Stephen West version of switching which color shows the knit and which shows the purl.  The top right hat is just a 2x2 rib hat in sock yarn.

  I like following people who have travel vlogs or blogs.  On this trip I saw two more Instagram accounts to follow.  I saw Our Mixed Journey when we were leaving the parking lot of a Wal*Mart in Great Falls, Montana.  Later I saw Skoolchella when we got back from our hike up to Grinnell Lake.

  I also seem to have cracked the front of my FitBit.  I don't think it happened on the trip, but I'm not sure.  The line of the crack is so thin that you can't even tell it's there most of the time.  I just happened to notice it on a hike.