America is full of stuff...

No photos today - they are in the camera and will come eventually but I wanted to write in a few observances by location.

It is worth noting that this is a whirlwind trip - while 3.5 weeks will be our longest vacation ever it still requires a lot of driving to make it across country and so this is definite "if it's Tuesday it must be Iowa" kind of trip. Except for friends' houses we won't be anywhere very long.

3 big cities:
PITTSBURGH - we spent a morning in Pittsburgh to see the Andy Warhol Museum. We arrived before it opened so we walked along the river for a while. At 9:00 in the morning the city was already mobbed with tailgaters for a University of Pittsburgh fans. The Museum seemed to know about the tailgaters and had their own parking lot ($6 vs. $25) with an attendent who seemed to check people out (or at least their attire) to confirm that they were museum-goers and not people with large foam fingers and coolers full of beer.

CLEVELAND - In Cleveland we enjoyed the glorious weather but poked our head into the Library to confirm that every city in America has a better library than Washington, DC. Cleveland's is particularly beautiful. At the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame we liked the films about the history of rock.

CHICAGO - Caren and John hosted us and we got to eat yummy vegetables from their enviable garden. Together we headed to the Harry Potter exhibit at the Science and Industry Museum (which featured props and costumes from the movie). Dan and I thought that the gift shop was missing an opportunity by not offering kitten plates like in Dolores Umbridges office.


And a lot of little towns:

• Milan, OH to see Edison's birthplace and discovered Melon Festival
• RV Hall of Fame in Indiana
• The Rutherford Hayes home
• The William McKinley Memorial in Niles, OH where the local high school team was the McKinley Red Dragons - we propose it should be the McKinley Assasins or the McKinley Gold Standard or the McKinley Puerto Ricans
• In West Branch, IA we STRONGLY recommend Reid's Beans for lunch. At the Hoover Museum we learned that he is apparantly no longer associated just with the depression but rather with his lifetime of humanitarian work especially saving Beligium (???) from starvation.
• The bridges of Madison Country

And more...