Road Trip

Jack Kerouac reports that he wrote the influential On the Road in just three weeks, which seems unreasonably short. Yet driving across the country during this past week left me so inspired that I feel as if a dozen novels brew inside. My appreciation for America's vastness, its diversity, its greatness is suddenly renewed. And with gas at $1.53 or so a gallon, it was a fine time to make the trip.

   
Here's Jacob in Wyoming near a field of bison (which were apparently behind him when I took this picture!). I figured that I would take a picture of each of the kids in each state that we drove through and then compile the photos in a notebook. I actually forgot about my goal in Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana, so we'll have to catch the "I" states on the way back.  
Here Jacob and Eric meander through the Desert Dome at the famed Omaha Zoo. The zoo's focus on biome had us all entranced, as we found our way through a swampland, rainforest, butterfly forest, and shark tunnel.

Here's an accurate synopsis of our nutrition during the trip: only foods with "corn syrup" as a main ingredient, please! As a teenager, my ward's tradition of bringing donuts to seminary cured me of ever craving them again. I think that this road trip has cured me of both McDonald's hamburgers and Teddy Grahams. 

One trip highlight was touring the Kirtland Temple, a structure built by some of our church's founders. Historians recently discovered that the doors were actually a deep green apple color, so they were repainted accordingly.

Now we're hanging out at my parents' home in rural Maryland, where my mom made us beef stew and folded our laundry. At church this morning Jacob told his Sunbeam teacher that there is a huge bridge connecting his house to the Statue of Liberty (he's got geography on the brain). It's an ideal destination for an ideal drive across the country.