Marriott Des Moines

... navigating us through Des Moines to the hotel. Tomorrow, head over towards the Quad Cities, see my aunt who just got diagnosed a couple days ago with stage 4 cancer that had spread to the brain, and then work towards home for a late night arrival. Sigh, there have been many things that have made us wonder if this vacation should have occurred, but yet we survived and life with hectic and chaotic once we get home, Sigh

... a whole lot else of that meal unfortunately. By the way, Americans LOVE cheese. I swear they have cheese on cheese.<br><br>After lunch Amanda headed off and we had to get down to the chapel to help Nate and the groomsmen with final touches. We plugged 'Simpson College' into the GPS and off we went. We hadn't even left the car park and we were trying to overtake a mini-van in a dual lane road when it cut us off. We were a little shocked and still with little experience I hung back ...

... and we got to meet more family and friends albeit briefly as well as being able to chat to Alicia's mum a little more. The rehearsal came and went with a couple of laughs but ran successfully and it was a hurry back to the motel to shower and dress. As everyone else had dressed BEFORE the rehearsal we got a phone call asking "where are you?" We hurried up and got down to La Hacienda, Alicia and Nate's favourite mexican restaurant for the rehearsal dinner.<br><br>We met some more people ...

... We watched a short film about the Hall which was a little corny (pardon the pun) but added to the experience and then we entered the Hall. Throughout there were displays of Iowa's involvement in sport and they did a fantastic job but it was more for Iowa people or people who knew about Iowa sport. I'm a sport person and it wasn't really for me but I did recognise some names and found some interesting information. Being interested in sport I did take a little longer ...

... little tougher than I imagined, but not horrible. We then showered and hit the road towards Des Moines. We arrived and parked downtown. After walking around for about 15 minutes, we felt like we had seen all we wanted to see, haha. It was a little bigger than Knoxvilles downtown, but it seemed like noone was smiling and there wasn't anything around except buisnesses. Maybe we were in the wrong part, but oh well. We left after grabbing a bite to eat for lunch and started towards Nebraska...

... middle a gurgling stream is an enclosed bridge (as seen in the movie) stretching across. There are several of the bridges around town, we saw a few but our fav was probably at the town park where they also had a castle like structure and a big garden maze, fun! And to add to the appeal of this town it is also John Waynes birth place. They have the house he was born in ...

I thought I should provide a little background info about my journey. A lot of people have asked me why I wanted to travel in Southeast Asia. Here's a list of reasons:<br><br>-SE Asia is cheap<br>-European tours are so cliche<br>-I love Asian food<br>-Ancient temples<br>-World-class SCUBA diving<br>-Volcanoes<br>-Cultural ...

... an area. Tom, the parking attendant, wearing a dirty Vietnam vet trucker cap, directs us to Fong's Pizza, where we will be meeting Billie Greenwood and our host for the night. <br><br>We talk to him for a while, as another customer drives in. I couldn't resist, so I took a picture of the white bread snadwich he left on the bumper of a random car. I giggled uncontrollably. Ryan needs to wash some clothes so he does that, I throw my Air Force shirt in there as ...

We took the Moterhome in for a tire repair and the tire guy had one tire to match our current tires so we bought it for our spare and headed to Des Moines. We arrived in Des Moines at 4:30 and meet with Mary's cousin Tom Wright in downtown Des Moines for dinner in the new trendy downtown area. We toured his modernly refurbished offices which use to be the Tucker Car showroom and a parking garage. After dinner Tom drove us around the city to show us all the new buildings and ...

... it's still weird. I'm really missing all of my friends, even though I know there are more friends to be made around the corner. I'll be starting my job in Istanbul on January 15th, so it won't be long until I'm thrown into the deep end again. No friends, no idea how to get around the city, relearning how to accomplish the simplest tasks. It makes one wonder, "Why does she do this to herself when it's infinitely easier to ...