Friday, July 02, 2004

Great Wall of Crap

We have the first wall of crap bricked into our vault. I feel I have to use every last centimeter of available space because I can't tell if it will all fit. We have all of today to git 'er done; they pick up our vault tomorrow.

My other fear is that it will be too heavy for the forklift...

Kay and I will be relieved when we're done with this phase of the move.

Thursday, July 01, 2004

Condensed 2 Bedroom Apartment

It's a good thing I packed so carefully in the beginning, 'cause we inevitably ran out of time and at the end were pretty much just shoving things in. No telling what I broke, and I don't care, neither. The point is, it's in. And in one vault.

I watched Fausto load the thing onto the truck. I was afraid the forklift would tip over when he attempted to hoist it. The burly machine made a terrible groaning sound, but it did lift the bulging vault onto the truck. Fausto didn't say a word. I quickly went inside. The truck drove away.

Badlands,

South Dakota, that is. A good place to hide, especially if you're a blaggard or a scoundrel.





The evening we arrived.





Our sleeping quarters. We slept well, a cool night.





The living room and kitchen.





The happy chef in her outdoor kitchen. She whipped up cornbread and soup. The evening light was golden, like her corn bread. The soup was canned, like these comments.





We got a nice sunset too.

Minneapolis to Esterville



Kay and I drove up to Minneapolis for a very short visit with Wayne and Susan. We saw their nice home, had a great pancake breakfast before Susan had to head off to work, and looked through some of the photos they took on their trip to Italy. My photos of the fields of Iowa and South Dakota don't quite have the wow factor of the Italian coastline.

Our drive south from Minneapolis was highlighted by a storm with heavy rain and dramatic light effects.




From Minneapolis we headed to Esterville Iowa, where Kay's dad and stepmom live. We spent a day visiting with them, and Kay's uncle Lowell, and a cousin, and Pam, Kay's friend from high school.

This be Iowa.

Real-Life Tetris

Let's hope the many hours spent playing Tetris honed my spatial skills to razor-sharp. All of our belongings have to fit in this cube. I have taken apart most of our Ikea furniture, which was challenging enough to put together with instructions...

What doesn't fit gets left behind.

Today is ridiculously muggy, hot, and rainy. Kay and I are working like dogs, and looking like (a couple wet) dogs, putting things in boxes, or making boxes for things that don't have them, and also packing for our "camping" trip across the country. We're supposed to leave Saturday.

Spencer into South Dakota

From Minneapolis we drove southwest to Esterville and Spencer, two towns in the northwest corner of Iowa. There are lakes there which we didn't visit. We did visit with Kay's relatives, and then headed west into South Dakota.

This photo shows Kay's dad, Ron, talking to Kay as she drove us all to Kay's uncle Lowell's farm.



And this is the landscape of South Dakota. We had great weather across the plains and saw beautiful skies.