The Great American Roadtrip 2019, Day Eleven

Day Eleven: Des Moines, IA >> Madison, WI (290 miles)

This is it, folks. Last day of roadtrippin’.

Last morning waking up in a hotel and chiding my children to JUST GET YOUR CLOTHES AND YOUR SHOES ON ALREADY, GAWD.

Last morning of Pete giving me the ONE MORE MINUTE BEFORE YOU START SCREAMING PLEASE I AM GETTING MY SHOES ON, GAWD finger.

And then that was that, and we were on our way for the last time. Let’s do this.

(Oh and there was this sticker on a hotel room window that we walked past on our way to the car, and at the moment and in my headspace I thought it would make for an interesting photo, so I’m sorry to whomever was staying in that room that morning; I was the weirdo taking pictures of your room window.)

No breakfast here (no biggie) so we were off to hunt down our own.

We find ourselves in Des Moines at least once annually (it’s our normal halfway-there spot on our trips down to Kansas, so sometimes we stay the night and frequently we stop to run off the kiddos and grab a meal). So I had a breakfast spot squirreled away in my brain for when it finally would work into our schedule.

I really, REALLY wanted to finally go to Mullets, which is a dive-y spot that is known for fantastic breakfast, but unfortunately there was some HUUUUUUGE bike (expo? conference? festival? ride thing?) going on, we could not even find parking in the extra lot across the street from Mullets, and there were people on bikes errrrrwhere. So we accepted defeat and went off to find a new spot.

You win this time, bike riding people. BUT MARK MY WORDS WE WILL BE BACK.

Admittedly, I was grump lady about it, but Scott found this other spot called Drake Diner and I will admit, it was good stuff.

It reminded me a lot of Hubbard’s back in Middleton. Classic diner, great food.

There’s our waiter, taking the next booth’s order while trying to figure out what in the heck I was taking pictures of…

I ordered the Santa Fe Grits plate, which basically was like grits baked up all meatloaf style (stay with me here…) with lots of Hatch chiles, cheese, and sausage. They slice up a few thick slices of this grits meatloaf thing, give it a quick fry on each side on the griddle, and serve with eggs and toast. It was DIVINE. Would totally recommend this spot to anyone passing through (never ever sleep on Des Moines in general, though; there are tons of great food spots to be had here).

Everyone was stuffed on brunch yet again, so we went to run off calories at the Science Center of Iowa.

Artistic in-motion-leg-through-a-window shot, coming at ya hot.

Brudder love.

These turtles showing off (!). Or as Scott said when he noticed them, WE DO IT FOR THE ‘GRAM.

This museum was fine, good, okay, until we found the meteorologist green screen and that just elevated the entire museum to Awesome Status. It was good that the museum was pretty dead that day because my kids went absolutely bonkers and played with it forever.

First, it was the joy of realizing how a green screen works and attempting actual weather reports.

Which soon devolved to a Dab Off.

And then when Pete realized what the green towels provided would do, all semblance of normalcy left the building.

At some point another family wandered over to give it a try, so we went off to other parts of the museum.

My favorite they have a space section!!

The coolest thing to me is that they had auditorium theater showing short films on space and there was no additional cost for this, which is rare. Also the front area was clear so kiddos could lay down and watch, which was also cool. Please enjoy my very terrible photo of what was (in my defense) an incredibly dark theater.

Confession: see that boy on the left in this photo, at least half a dozen times in that room I would start to approach him and it would take me a second to realize that he was not, indeed, my child. Whoops my bad, wrong long-haired boy.

But I will say I see a ton of long-haired little dudes running around these days and it makes my heart happy. If you have glorious hair, no shame in keeping it long and enjoying it.

That was the very last photo I took in the museum. We went back to the car and headed home after that, and I legit only took one more photo, a random from the parking area of a rest stop along the way to Madison.

We got home late, dragged the contents of our trunk and back seats into the house (just dropped them on all on the kitchen floor, to deal with another time), and gave all the pets to our kitty who was screaming her head off at us all WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN style. Then we had a late dinner and all dragged our butts to our beautiful, beautiful beds. And: Fin.

I accounted for an extra day of travel (and I certainly could have found plenty to do in Des Moines) but I’m glad we headed back,instead we had a vacation day at home that we spent SLEEPING IN AS LATE AS WE WANTED, SO GLORIOUS. And dealing with all the stuff dragged out of the car. And doing mountains of laundry. And taking care of my 80-some plants for the first time in 12 days (did not lose a plant, not even one! Thank you, wicking system).

After we were home and all was said and done, I was pretty impressed that we made it without losing anything (EXCEPT THAT PIZZA), without losing anyone (or any limbs), and did it all under budget. And, we learned a few things from our very first family road trip adventure:

• I need to plan for shorter driving days, even if it means eating up more of my precious PTO days to get places. We didn’t stop as often as I thought we would, because on the long drive days we were more intent in making good time to our next destination. Which is a bummer.

• Don’t discount the little guys or unpopular spots. Some of our favorite adventures (petroglyph hunting!) and museums (SPAM!) on this trip were in small towns and rural areas.

• Making sandwiches in the car is daunting at first but like anything else in life: practice makes perfect and next thing you know you’re breezily balancing jars of peanut-butter and fluff on your lap with your hands are behind your head opening Doritos bags for the back-seaters.

• Don’t sleep on the Badlands. One of the highlights of the trip, chasing the kids all over that beautiful place.

• Bring the giant Rand McNally road atlas and keep it up front at all times. We lost phone signals or would take a detour just for funsies, and we found ourselves referring all.the.time.

• When I told people we were going to Utah they would all get excited and start naming off all the Instagram-worthy spots in the state. Uh, nope sorry we’re staying at the unpopular area… Then people would lose interest and I was really worried that maybe we were making a mistake but NO GUYS NO. Northeast Utah has lots to do and see and it’s gorgeous too. Utah was perhaps my most favorite place we visited.

• The basket system was helpful and made efficient use of the trunk, but it was also a bit clunky; we’d often confuse the dirty-clothes and hotel-room basket, and our “clean clothes” basket was hard to dig through to grab outfits for each person. I’ll have to work on that a bit before our next trip.

• I wish we had spent less time in the Rockies, it was kinda boring at the end. Yeah, I said it. Don’t @ me (I blame the disgustingly hot weather).

• That said, Greeley was more fun than I thought it would be.

• Some shelf-stable foods were huge hits, others were duds. Big yes to mashed potato cups. Big yes to fixin’s for Indian burritos (this + this + this, add hot sauce, BOOM). SPAM slices and extra freeze-dried veggies to add to ramen was clutch. But the pasta dinners were bland, and make sure you get the individual cups of rice over the bags. The bags of rice have a gummy texture (ew). And while they sounded handy, we really didn’t use the foil bags of tuna or chicken (I ate one as a snack one night but otherwise: I just dragged all those things back home).

• Western Nebraska is just as pretty as western South Dakota.

• Our method of eating out one meal per day, and aiming for that to be lunch, worked well for us. It was great for the budget and freed up most evenings to just be a time to relax and unwind for the day.

• Every evening I’d go out and spend about 10-15 minutes cleaning out and re-organizing the car. I am a major introvert so this not only gave me some blessed Alone Time, but that small bit of organizing made a huge difference. It was so nice to get in the car in the morning to hit the road and every thing was clean and ready to go (it is shocking how much of a mess we could make in that car in one measly day).

• I let the kids each bring a stuffed animal, pillow, and throw blanket. It took up room in the car and I was super worried something would get left behind but I now get why people usually bring their own pillows and such on trips: it just makes it more homey and you sleep so much better with these bits from home.

• Twelve days sounded like a long time but in reality it all went by in a beautiful flash.

• Rancheritos, guys. It was worth going out west just for the Rancheritos.

And there you go, we’re home. But not for long!, because we spent Labor Day running amok in Chicago, as usual. Here’s a wee sneak peek of what’s to come with that post, gimme all those Korean sticky chicken lollipops and masubi rice and honey butter chips, yes please.

See y’all again soon.