NE & IA reviewed...

Hello again. Perhaps some of you were actually hoping for more detail of the trek across Nothingland USA, or more officially, Nebraska and Iowa. Those who aren't interested in the minutiae, skip to the next blog, which will be up soon. If you do like boring details, keep reading, I will boring detail you to death...apparently I am pretty good at it...

So we left Ogallala,NE at 7:25am MT. We crossed into Central Time at 7:49am, so just like that it was now 8:49am CT. There goes an hour, depending on which school of thought you're in. We hit the Wal-Mart in Lexington around 10:30am. I wanted some Wal-Mart jerky, Sean grabbed some real food (and some sugar), and we all filled up the Jeeps. Sean was already kinda tired so was hoping something that he bought to eat would perk him up. Steve and I were hoping it would too. Last thing we needed was another tired driver... Steve took over driving duties at this point. I think he was bored of sitting in the passenger seat for the better part of 9 days. He had driven the Jeep, albeit briefly, on the Hell's Revenge trail, but since we had gotten partway through Nebraska on the way to Moab, he had sat shotgun. We were back on the road by 11. The next stop could be Iowa!
We ended up stopping just after noon at a rest area past Grand Island,NE for snack and stretch. Steve and I were hoping to make Chicago before we stopped for the night as that would leave us a good 7hrs still from Mom's. We still had about 10hrs of driving though to make our target, and I knew it would be a long shot. Still, aim high and you never know where you'll go. We hit Lincoln around 1:45pm CT and stopped to fill up and get some drinks, and make some room for them (10-100s for all). Back at 'er.
We hit Desoto,IA at 4:35pm (filled the Jeeps and 10-100'd). It's just west of Des Moines, which put us just over 13hrs from the border according to our records coming out. Still a good haul, but if we managed to go straight through to Mom's we could be there for 7am ET, just as they would be getting up. Won't happen, so still pushing for Chicago area for the night. We'll see what happens. Back on the road by 5.
In the next hour or so we had some potential trouble - Ralf's dash went Christmas tree-like. His tranny light and the service light went on. Not good. We pulled over and had a look. Kind of like a group of city workers (from what I hear anyway...), there were 4 guys standing around looking at the engine bay and wondering what do we do. Ralf had crawled underneath the Grand and felt the t-case which was pretty warm. He wouldn't want to leave his hand on it for an extended time kind of warm. We opted to hit the next stop and let the system cool down while we grabbed a bite to eat. We stopped in Williamsburg. Sean grabbed his laptop so we could check out a couple of forums to see what the problem/remedy might be. We hooked up with some of the guys from home, and the news was good. No serious issues, just time for the regularly scheduled service. That had been Sean's guess, and we were all hoping he was right, especially Ralf. Relieved, we hit the road again by 8pm. We discussed options for the drive, and decided that we would continue until someone begged for mercy. Steve and I took the lead, still aiming for Chicago.
We must have taken a wrong turn somewhere and misread the maps because we ended up stopping in Ottawa for the night. Ralf had a brief "nap" on the I-80, so we called it a night. It was midnight, we were a little over halfway across Illinois, and that was it. We filled up the Jeeps so we could head out right away the next morning, then found a hotel. We crashed quickly. We were meeting for breakfast at 6am so we could be on the road by 6:30 and have a chance to get home for dinner. Would we make it to Mom's in time, or would we be re-heating our dinner? I knew there was going to be slim chance of making it to Kitchener for Kel's family's Easter reunion, but you just never know.
One last sleep, folks, and then we're home. Life is good, isn't it?