Mayhem with a Splash of Syrup

Day 3: From Zionsville, IN to Iowa City, IA

At this point you may be wondering what the deal is with our stopovers -- Athens, Zionsville, Iowa City? Aside from the cousins in Zionsville, Athens and Iowa City offer no great attraction for us other than that they happen to be where we want to be after the amount of hours we want to drive. Our choices had only 3 criteria:

1) They needed to be in the general direction of an actual point of interest.
2) They needed to be be about 5-6 hours from where we started in the morning.
3) They needed to have pet friendly accommodations.

I was killing myself trying to plot out a map that landed us at a major landmark each day. We'd have had to torture ourselves, the kids and the dog to make that many hours in the car happen everyday. Then I realized I didn't have to. By taking our time we are being kind to ourselves and are actually enjoying the road time. During our drive time, we will be passing through our landmarks during the middle of the day instead of at the end or in the morning. Works out well for us!

So Day 3 brought rusty treasure and a little geeky fascination with the show "American Pickers." If you haven't seen it, it's about a couple of guys who make their living driving around America digging through other people's stuff, buying it and then selling it in their store, Antique Archaeology. It's a lot more interesting than I make it sound. It's more a show about stories of America, Americans and the stuff that made their specific moment in history memorable. I like it because it takes me places in America I've never visited. The more you know, people!

We got to Antique Archaeology in Le Claire, Iowa in the early afternoon. Le Claire turned out to be a really cool town that definitely felt like it was it's own place, not dominated by big chain stores or overrun with people walking around attached to their mobile technology having to get from places A to B. Down the main street along the river speakers were attached to every few trees, providing a soft soundtrack for your afternoon stroll. On the river front was a covered pavilion, picnic tables and more music playing from above. There wasn't a festival or parade happening. It was just a Tuesday. I love that.

The store itself is just what it's supposed to be -- lots of rusty bikes, leather jackets, old machinery, dusty lamps -- all of it was what we see Frank and Mike pick in the show. It was definitely smaller than I imagined, but my imagination is pretty huge so this makes sense.  It took some time to take it all in, but after hunting, Pauly zeroed in on our perfect road trip splurge: a 1936 Philco Radio. It's wooden. It's old. It's scratchy. It's absolutely me! It will go quite nicely with the wooden cabinet record player I have back home.

After the lazy afternoon in Le Claire shopping, strolling and having ice cream by the river, we got back in the car for the hour-long drive to Iowa City. We checked into the Baymont Inn. I was greeted at the front desk by a multicultural staff of 1 Chinese dude, 1 Indian dude and 1 white dude. (The front desk man at the Super 8 was/is Indian). I only mention this because we were having a conversation with some friends before we left Maryland about what type of diversity we might find while driving through the country. Happy to say it's been easier than I expected!

We dropped our stuff off in our room, walked Lucy and went to dinner at Perkins, a sort of pilgrimage to one of our dear friend David's favorite places in the whole world. And this... this... is where we realized that 3 days on the road were beginning to take its toll on our children. Let's see where to begin... 4 milk spills within 2 minutes, persistent jumping up and down in the booth, Ruby wedging herself between my back and the seat backwards and pretending to be asleep and snoring loudly, wild and spontaneous "roars" from Leo, the unnecessary seasoning of hands and feet with the salt and pepper shakers, and then finally... Ruby flashing the entire (near empty) restaurant of senior citizens and then screaming "nipples!" for all to hear. Oh and then there was the moment when Ruby barked, "macaroni and cheese!" to the waitress the instant she stepped up to our table. It was only the end of Day 3. 6 more to go. Pray for us!