More like LIFE than TIME

It took 2,000 miles for me to finally get BC's 'perch' just right. In front of the passenger seat is a storage bucket which levels the area; then it's a jumble of foam cushions, back rest, baby bumpers Velcro'd to the dash and her lamb's pillow. Jeez, I'm looking at her jealously while I continue to drive through

and

until more than once I declare to BC that maybe we're dead and just don't know it. Finally a vehicle appears in the distance. 

Even the tourist attractions are empty; at least the ones I stop to see. Like this monument dedicated to 15 year old Kate Shelly, who crawled across a railroad bridge during a thunderstorm to warn the depot (and oncoming passenger train) that a locomotive had plunged through the trestle up ahead near her family's farm.  Imagine. Amazon has a children's book, Kate Shelly and the Midnight Express.  

Pony Express station, NE

Once I hit Nebraska (during the time Kansas got its butt kicked) I've been pretty much in the vicinity of storms, but I finally learned that it doesn't matter how closely I followed the NOAA website; there's a bulls-eye painted on the roof of my RV.  It was the same on the boat.  A truck kicked up a rock and my windshield will have to be replaced by the time the hairline crack stops its own wandering, but it coulda been worse.

A pleasant exception was the beautiful weather while visiting my cousin in northern Illinois, also beautiful. We hadn't seen one another in either 40 or 55 years; we're not quite clear in our recollections, but it was a wonderful visit full of love, family stories and hot food.

I left two days ago and it's gone from sun back to gloom, but luckily I happened to stumble upon an out-of-the-way picnic area on a back road when struck with a migraine (something about the change in barometric pressure). The next morning, thrilled that I wasn't rousted during the head-pounding night, I pretended, while having coffee, that all I surveyed was mine. 

Tell me this doesn't remind you just a little of North by Northwest:

I wonder if I'll see people in Indiana?