On the road again

The vacation ends but the travel doesn't - at least for one of us.

Fall is often a busy time for me, work wise, and I am always grateful to be working.
And I still very much enjoy the going to some place new. Yes, I joke about the glamour spots I go to, like Mattoon, Illinois and Albany, Georgia, but for me, new is good.

This time, it is Mankato, Minnesota, in the heart of the corn and soybeans belt - I assume crop rotation - and it is tidy as can be in that earnest Midwestern way that I find so endearing. And the petunias! Every cold-climed place I've been in recent years bursts fourth with a profusion of petunias - along the highways, in enormous hanging baskets, in medians and window boxes.
Summers that are short are all the sweeter.



South Dakota - trying to carve out an identity beyond the giant president heads.
Iowa - Pork. They serve a thing called pork wings. I say, when pig fly.
But they let same gendered people get married there as well. An enigma.

But I miss my travel buddy back at home and listening to Andrew Loog Oldham on the satellite every morning.