John's Journal: What I Did On My Summer Vacation

I was sitting in the passenger seat while my wife was driving eastbound across South Dakota near the end of a two-week July road trip to California and back. I was half asleep when Beth, pointing to a farm field, shouted, “CORN!!”

She was so excited that the car jerked to the left. My heart jumped as she quickly got us back in the center of the left lane on Interstate 90. Oh my. But this was a big deal. As we drove across states like Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and Montana, the geography was dominated by wide open spaces and a big sky, for sure, but the beautiful green vision of a cornfield, followed by soybean fields – sights we had grown up with – told us we were close to home. Minnesota.

We have grandkids who live outside of San Francisco. We spent a week with them and the oldest had his fifth birthday party while we were there. We have visited many times over the nine years that our son and daughter-in-law – and later their two kids – have lived there. We have always flown, but this time was different because of our cargo.

How much did we spend on gas? We stopped for fuel 15 times, spending a total of $539. The cheapest per-gallon price was $3.19 in Pine Bluff and Rawlins, Wyoming, Murdo, S.D., and Worthington, Minn. The most expensive was $5.19 in Healdsburg, California. How many miles did we drive? The total was 4,580 miles.

We have three kids. The oldest is in California and our second son has lived in the Phoenix area for a long time, but he and his girlfriend are soon moving to her hometown near Sacramento, California. (Our youngest child is a high school teacher in the Twin Cities and at this point she hasn’t informed us that she plans to join her brothers in California.)

Are we glad we didn’t fly? As things turned out, we would have been trying to fly home when there was a worldwide tech problem and flights were grounded. Along with that, Delta — our usual airline — had all kinds of troubles of its own, with lots of flights cancelled. In our car, the travel schedule was whatever we wanted it to be. Small blessings.

The cargo was a small (but heavy) church pew. When the church I attended as a kid in my Iowa hometown put up a new building, the very old church that had stood for decades was demolished, with the interior cleared out beforehand. I took possession of the pew, which has been in our home for decades. Our Arizona son had claimed it long ago, and his impending move to California convinced Beth and I to drive the pew out there and leave it in his brother’s garage. We folded down the backseat in her small SUV and shoved it in … which didn’t leave a lot of room for things like luggage.

The pew probably weighs close to 300 pounds and there was no way to ship it. We looked into driving it to California in a rented vehicle and flying home, but that was super expensive. So my wife and I, two people in their mid-sixties, looked at each other a few months ago and said, “We can do this.”

Well, we did it, but it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t pretty. Our drive west was on a fast track. We headed south to Des Moines, Iowa, and got on Interstate 80, which runs all the way to San Francisco. This part of the trip was a real rush job because we wanted to get to those grandkids. We drove all the way to Cheyenne, Wyoming, on day one. That was nearly 800 miles over more than 12 hours on the road. We didn’t have a hotel room reserved that night … a mistake that didn’t happen again. I inquired at one front desk, learned the place was full, and drove to another hotel. They had one room left. We took it (price be damned) and went to sleep.

Fun fact: Cheyenne, the capitol of Wyoming, has a population of around 64,000 and there are 14 cities in Minnesota larger than that. Cheyenne is roughly the same size as Burnsville and Lakeville.

Did you stop and eat or eat in the car? Both. Beth packed sandwiches for the first day of each trip, which was smart. We stopped for only three sit-down meals; dinner at a restaurant inside a casino inside a hotel in Elko, Nev., on the westbound drive, lunch at an Italian-Polish restaurant in Jackson, Wyoming, while heading home and a breakfast in Sioux Falls (details below). We ate breakfast at the hotels most mornings. I bought an egg salad sandwich at a gas station in La Barge, Wyoming (population 402). Beth opened it, sniffed it, made a face and announced that there was no way anyone was eating it.

From Cheyenne we drove to Elko, Nevada, which was 670 miles and more than 10 hours away. The scenery in southern Wyoming is nothing to get excited about, trust me. Day three was a seemingly short eight-hour drive that took us to our son’s house. They had pizza ready for us as we got reacquainted with our grandkids and Grandma handed gifts to both kids and both parents.

Were you bored in the car? At times, for sure. Satellite radio is highly recommended, with a vast variety of listening choices. We listened to some podcasts. We sang. We danced.

The drive west was the easy part. We spent eight relaxing days in California before hitting the road for home. I should forever be ridiculed for making this statement: “We’re going to take it easy on the drive home, seeing some sights and taking our time.”

Oh, we saw lots of sights. Grand Teton National Park. Yellowstone National Park. We watched the Old Faithful geyser erupt. We marveled at Devils Tower, made famous by one of my favorite movies, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” We saw elk and antelope. We were delayed on the highway in Grand Teton by a herd of buffalo that decided they were in charge of human traffic patterns. All those things were glorious.

But we certainly did not take it easy. After spending two nights in hotels on the drive west, I booked hotels for three nights on the way home, figuring that seemed like “taking it easy.” It was anything but.

How did you navigate? Being oldsters, we actually went to a bookstore and bought a 2024 United States highway atlas. The national highway map was valuable for looking at the big picture, and individual state maps were also a great help. I use the Waze app on my phone whenever I drive around Minnesota in my job, and that came in very handy on this trip.

Leaving California on day one of the return trip, we drove on Interstate 80 all the way to Salt Lake City. That was about 12 hours. From there we exited I-80 for good and headed north back into Wyoming. This drive was mostly on two-lane roads, winding through tiny towns and not much else. We wondered how far people who live in such remote places travel for things like groceries.

Day two focused on Grand Teton and Yellowstone. They are fantastic, but it’s a lot of slow driving on winding roads. We spent that night in Billings, Montana, arriving at midnight. I was absolutely beat up, took Tylenol before going to bed and the next day we drove on I-90 from Billings to Sioux Falls. Someone had recommended a place called Josiah's Coffee House and Café in downtown Sioux Falls, and we had a great breakfast there before the final four hours or so home.

Did you keep up with the world? We learned that Donald Trump has been shot at while looking at our phones at a westbound I-80 rest stop in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. When Joe Biden took himself out of the running for a second term, we were heading eastbound through the Sierras.

We murdered a million bugs while driving across South Dakota in the dark. We stopped in Worthington for gas, and both of us scrubbed our car’s windshield and grill, then we went through a car wash. Some of those insect carcass remnants may be attached permanently.

Before that, with great joy and relief, we crossed from South Dakota into Minnesota and pulled into the first Minnesota rest area on I-90. A few minutes later we were back in the car on the interstate. Beth suddenly began digging into her purse and announced that she had left her phone in the restroom. I drove a couple miles east to the next exit, backtracked until the first exit on the other side of the rest area, and pulled back in. She went in and came out with phone in hand. A small victory.

We made it home safely, but we were both absolutely exhausted. My wife is still giving me grief about my rotten travel planning, which is entirely appropriate.

As we traversed southern Minnesota with home in clear sight, Beth looked around and smiled. Sunshine, corn, soybeans, neat little towns, rolling hills, familiar license plates, nothing but green green green everywhere.

“I don’t like winter but I love the Midwest,” she said. “I just love it.”

On that there is no argument.

--MSHSL senior content creator John Millea has been the leading voice of Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Twitter @MSHSLjohn and listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get podcasts. Contact John at [email protected] or [email protected]