Day 41

 

 July 27 - Mahoney State Recreation Area, NE

We woke up and got on the road by 6:05am after waking up to a 5:30am alarm. I was up at 5am and walked to a Moraine Park overlook to watch the sunrise over the meadow. The valley was thick with fog, making the meadow look like a slow-moving lake. As the sun rose, I watched the fog slowly melt away, exposing the hidden meadow moment by moment. It was absolutely stunning and mystifying. I was so happy to have that morning time to myself before everyone else woke up.

We groggily got the kids in the car and Ev fell asleep almost right away - and we drove for about two hours before anyone got hungry and needed food. Cassandra attended a virtual work-meeting at 8:30am, and by 10:30 she took the helm after we gassed in eastern Colorado. We stopped for lunch at Lee's Family Restaurant in western Nebraska. It was a classic Americana diner (with movable a salad bar!). This was a cozy, comfortable restaurant, and we chatted with the waitress about camping. She told us about how she and her fiance purchased an RV last year, but haven't been about to use it once and now are planning on selling it because they don’t have the fine for it. I told he she just had to make the time for it, and then immediately felt like a privileged asshole talking about the luxury of time (however, perhaps consider time before purchasing a camper?).

We left Lee's with care and support from the restaurant-worker-friends and flew through Nebraska on Interstate 80, buying increasingly-cheaper gas and trying to get to Mahoney State Recreation Area as fast as we could. No more looking out for neat things to stop and see - we were just noting what we passed by and planned for the future ("maybe we'll stop there next time"). In hindsight, we realize that we planned very long driving legs on this trip and will likely not do it this way again - we'd rather have one loooong driving day, then chill longer and take shorter, leisurely drives so we can see and feel more on the road, giving us a chance to know the places we travel through better, traveling on local roads and slower speeds. In the future, we hope to "slingshot" to where we want to be, then take our time being there.

We arrived at Mahoney around 5:30pm Central Time (we lost another hour on this commute). The kids were so happy to be out of the car and immediately jumped into a large-group game of soccer being played in a large field behind our campsite. They had a blast running around and making new friends. Ev and Til each found their own people and made quick friends (27 total new friends to date across many states). We (finally, for the first time) made nachos in the microwave oven, and they were delicious (Cassandra didn't eat too much because her stomach felt unsettled since lunch…). It is dizzying and so exciting thinking about all the places we've been as we leave the west and enter the center of America. Mahoney is a really neat (and very large) spot that would have been a great place to spend some time. That said, we were really looking forward to showering here, and the washing-house was so uninviting that we decided to shower (for the first time!) at the camper using the privacy tent and our camp "shower". The water was really cold, but also fun and refreshing. We made a huge muddy mess next to the camper!

We didn't take any pictures here at all, other than this video of bats swirling around in the early evening...

Ev and I slept in the tent together, which was (amazingly) the first time we'd done that through the entire trip. It was lovely and cozy being with Evelyn in the tent - she is just so big and sweet and not a little kid anymore! I recognize these moments will be increasingly fewer, and I cherish them more and more.

Next stop, Illinois and Shabbona State Park!