We did it! Made it out to California and back home again, all in one piece. We logged almost 6,000 miles in our new RAV4. It is a 2018, but it still feels new to us. We call it the Nanny Car, because it is always squawking about one thing or another: “That car is too close!”, “Stay in your lane!” and “Lookout for that pedestrian!” You get the idea, but we learned yesterday that it is not only a nanny, but it is also a bit of a tattle-tale. The day after its odometer clocked 15,000 miles, we got a call from the Toyota dealer, asking us when we would like to schedule maintenance appointment. The car had called it in, not content to simply nag us via Nice And Gentle reminders on its display panel, it had to phone it in to the mother ship. 

Pictured is a bit of sculpture that was displayed at the Missouri welcome center, just inside the Oklahoma state line, along I-44. It addition to this orange effigy, this rest stop also sported a wall full of license plates, featuring all fifty states. On this trip, Anne has been playing the license plate game. She has already won one game, scoring three Hawaii’s, including two parked next to each other. She has almost won a second game, missing only a few, small east coast states. I’m looking at you Joe Biden. You need to get more of your home state residents out on the road. I tried to convince Anne to fill out her dance card, using the wall of plates, but she wasn’t having any of it.

In our travels, we certainly saw plenty of road construction. If I had a dollar for every orange barrel I saw, I would be rich, but now that I’m back home, I would like to make a political comment. We have certainly spent plenty of time in Trump country, although, as we were driving into New Mexico, I saw a billboard that announced, “I’m Riding with Biden.” After being booted off both Facebook and Twitter, the Donald attempted to run a blog, but Trump’s blog failed, bigly and in only 29 days. That’s less than three Scaramuccis. Sad. On counterpoint, while traveling, I have successfully logged thirteen years of continuous blogging.