We awoke at our truckstop in Fort Collins to a familiar sight. Old Goat! It would appear that the vagabonds had followed us or at least come to the same conclusion that this was a good place to stop. However, given that we(I) had rudely awoken them from their slumber the previous mornings with my clumsy early morning fumblements (second morning I tried to make up for it with a cup of coffee that made Johnny shudder/jig with delight) we chose to leave them alone and head on.

This next stage was always going to be one of long driving through repetitive Nebraska plains. Which indeed it was. To start it was hot and windy. Bloody windy, we pulled up at our stop, the Country View RV park at Ogahlalla. Not much country to view but it was cheap and clean and the folk running it were lovely. The guy who ran it talked to me about the lake and the two englishmen he knew. His tree guy who had just left and his mate Kevin, who shat his pants in a deep lake and he had to go save him. However, I digress( I tend to do that) This place was hotter than Satan’s Arsehole after a curry buffet, and with exactly as much wind as that same arsehole. It was like being in a tumble drier. Conny showered and in the ten metres to the van her hair was bone dry.

We headed to the local chinese for dinner. Which was shit. But the dude was funny.

More of the same ahead we tried to sleep despite the fear that the near hurricane winds were going to fling us all the way to Oz, we tried to get some sleep. We plainly failed but as morning came we destroyed a few ‘wiches of the Egg Sand variety and hit the long straight road for round two. We stopped at the Pony Express post in Gothenburg, where we encountered a troupe of Amish on an excursion. The Pony Express was quite impressive. It was like a telegram service on horseback and speed. Riders would change horses every ten to fifteen miles and the riders would do legs of about ninety each and pass the mail shaped baton along the way.

We hit the road once more but the weather turned sour. The rain was a beast. Seldom have I seen such stuff shy of next to the shore of Lake Geneva. If you’re interested, it often rains ridiculously by Lausanne for some reason. It is like God himself decides to shift the lake North by a few hundred metres from time to time and he just elevates the water, shunts it along and drops it down…usually as I was driving past. Anyway, I digress, as I often do.

Then came the lightning. The sky lit up in huge streaks. Chain reactions like the ghost of Nicholas Tesla at play in the heavens. These then turned more to sheets, lighting the whole dark sky. We chose to sleep in the bed inside the van this night. A couple of days and nights of this and a few pancakes later we hit St Louis, and checked out the Cahokia mounds. Not that impressive to look at but one can’t help wonder at the history of a place like that. Transported in one’s imagination to when the plains people thrived there. It is odd, but I had never thought of the native Americans as dwelling in cities or communities outside of the nomadic tribes oft seen in the like of Last of the Mohicans and Dances with Wolves. This place was settled and thrive for several hundred years from around 700 AD. Pretty impressive really.

Next stop Chicago. More about that next time.