The Heater from Van Meter, Old Friends and the End of a Long Journey

The last three days of the trip around going to be summarized below in a single post. No offense to the people I visited on these days.

May 24, 2019

This day amounted to driving from Grand Island, Nebraska, to some place just west of the Ohio border. While it was a relatively boring drive, at least it was sunny, if not increasingly humid (welcome back to the landlocked Midwest!)

The high point came as I passed an exit for Winterset, Iowa, where I saw a bunch of signs regarding John Wayne’s birthplace, and the first thing that comes to mind is, “F*** John Wayne!” Well, about 10 seconds later, I see a sign for Van Meter, Iowa, and before I even see the signs I think “The Heater From Van Meter! Bob Feller!” and sure enough when I see signs to visit his birthplace I take the exit because Bob Feller actually was an American hero (and arguably the greatest right-handed pitcher of all time for my beloved Cleveland Indians). The Bob Feller Museum appeared to double as a building for the city, but it had a nice tribute to Feller’s history and was worth the stop.

After that, I simply drove and drove and drove until I finally got to my destination. Naturally, Indiana doesn’t sell any kind of alcohol worth buying in anything but specialized stores, so I had to track one of those down to get some decent beer. When I checked into my motel, the clerk made a joke that he’d never seen anyone unpack their car so quickly, and I replied, “I’ve been driving for 14  hours and all I want to do right now is get to my room and drink beer!” As I approached the elevator, I found a guy patiently holding my door and said thank you, to which he replied, “When I heard ’14 hours’ and ‘beer’ I figured I needed to help you out.” A short exchange revealed he worked in a brewery north of Canton, so, yeah, small world.

That’s about it. I got to my room, drank beer and worked on my computer while I watched the knife show. Unfortunately, my experience of “the nicer the motel, the noisier the motel” held true and despite the room being luxurious as hell (it had a f-ing stove and oven) it was noisy as shit and I slept with earplugs.

May 25, 2019

After a restless night, I get to packing and have a really terrible time when I realize that my Arches National Park pin has popped-off of my back pack. The clerk is nice enough to let me back into my room to search, but I don’t find it there or on my way back to the car. Fortunately, I found that it had popped-off IN the trunk of my car, so miracles really do happen, even when magnets aren’t involved.

The cool thing about today is that I’m visiting my friend Joseph, who I haven’t so much as texted once or twice over the past ten years. When I was at Devils Tower, I took a selfie while sporting the devil horns, which made me think of Joseph because we were both metal heads at points in our lives. So, I texted him, not even knowing if the number still worked, and the guy replies almost instantly. At some point later in the trip, we work out a visit for this day, and the latter half of the day is spent catching-up and learning about what he’d been doing for the past decade. A truly wonderful way to spend my return to Ohio.

May 26, 2019

It turns-out that my adventure isn’t quite over, yet. After spending a lazy morning with Joseph and his family, washing clothes and eating a great homemade breakfast, I decide to visit two southern Ohio places of interest that I’ve never seen before: Serpent Mound and Mound City. Like Mesa Verde National Park a few days earlier, these were two destinations that I’d been reading and learning about in school since I was a kid as part of various “Ohio History” classes. Visiting the Serpent Mound was more of a thrill because it’s honestly more impressive, especially from the ancient observation tower they have on the property to view it from. Mound City is actually part of the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in Chillicothe, Ohio, and it was a bit of a let-down (to say the last…to “feel shame” is more accurate) to discover the mounds were all re-creations because the originals had been leveled to set-up a training camp for World War I soldiers. Still, it was fun to check these places off an imaginary list and add two more pins to my collection.

After visiting these last two spots, I stayed with my friend Travis for the night. Travis was one of the people to plant the seeds of taking such a trip back when he stopped at my place in Akron, Ohio, prior to heading-out west for months. While visiting me, I talked him into buying a small video recorder to document his trip, which he did and ultimately sent to me to check-out myself. His footage of Montana and Utah, and just the fact that he went out on the road like that impressed me and contributed to my desire to do it myself some day. So, the evening was a celebratory one discussing what I’d seen and experienced myself.

May 27, 2019

Well, that’s all she wrote. The best part of this being my last day before going home to Akron was being able to spend it with my family celebrating Memorial Day. After sharing stories and meal with them, I headed back to Akron to fully unpack and sleep in my own bed for the first time in over three weeks. And, I wished I was still on the road.