#WeekendCoffeeShare: Prairie Bound!

Good Morning from Avoca, Iowa! This weeks coffee share will be brought to you from the American Pie Cafe, along I-80 as we start the second leg of our trip to South Dakota. We are heading out to our beloved parcel of land to open the trailer for our return trip during the Sturgis motorcycle rally later this year. We’ve brought our new dirt bikes as well and I am OVER THE MOON excited to have all of this land to explore. I’m praying we’re in good shape upon arrival as there was some wicked storms that passed through a few days ago.

It’s been a bit of an eventful first day, nothing bad, just interesting and one to remember.

We brought a riding mower to carve paths through our land for a driveway and also a riding track. Bill used the mower on Friday and the belt broke. Not a belt to be found in Michigan. We found one at the Rural King in Peru, Illinois so we stopped on the way there. Thank God for online searching and ordering!

Back on the road, we saw a 1956 Alfa Romero being towed today..

And a rather interesting set up of a motorhome towing a truck with a side by side in the bed..

We were excited to find a Perkins for dinner (there are none in Michigan) and left after learning that addition to the 30 minute wait, they had only ONE server working. We had yet to get to our destination, so we did not have the time to spend. McDonald’s again! I can’t wait to get on the scale when I get home.

The sun was setting and we pulled through our previous haunt, the Super 8 in Walnut just to see if any progress had been made. Unfortunately, they’ve been closed since a fire in a section of the hotel in July of 2020, and it looked like nothing had been done except cover the roof with plastic in that area. The nearby restaurant, Emma Jean’s was closed and for sale, and the McDonald’s connected to the gas station, has been closed for years.

It was sad, this has been our first stop annually since 2004, when I started coming to the Sturgis rally with Bill. I was reminded of all the times we rode into this parking lot, tired, sunburned, 675 miles from home. Bill would call his Mom to let her know we made it safe, while I went inside to check in. I’d find our room and open the curtains so he would know which room was ours, then we’d ride around and park the bikes outside the window of our room. When we rode out for our wedding in 2010, we and our friends gathered in this parking lot, as the tractor trailers on I-80 rumbled in the distance, the cicadas buzzed and the humid breeze rustled the cornfields. It was also our stop on all the return trips. For 16 years this has all been a part of our rally week memories. Even longer for Bill.

Sigh.

We got back on I-80 and continued on to our new traditional stop, the Motel 6 in Avoca, which we’ve been happy with. The rooms are reasonable, updated and clean, and they have a pool and onsite bar. We checked into our room, but I must advise, if your hotel room has a chair like this, move it somewhere you will NOT kick the legs every 2 seconds. I would say burn it immediately, but I’m not condoning destroying motel property. 🙂 The legs extend WAY beyond the seat and back, so it’s easy to misjudge the clearance every time you walk by it, kick it, stub your toe, and the noise it makes scraping across the wood laminate floor is lovely. Especially when your husband, who just drove over 600 miles is sound asleep.

So! The second leg of the trip is before us! Breakfast is almost here and can’t wait to share our week with you at the next coffee share! Thanks for joining and I’ll be around shortly.