The week of Thanksgiving I helped my brother move from New York City to Omaha, Nebraska…he is looking for a new, more relaxed pace in his life and NYC isn’t the place to attempt that so we loaded up the u-haul and headed out.  I had visited New York about 6-months prior to 9/11 and took my daughter to the top of the towers…being afraid of heights made it a challenge but it was an incredible sight that day…well…I hadn’t been to New York much since 9/11 so I made a point of stopping by Ground Zero for the first time since and it was one of the most emotional experiences of my life.  Because of the fencing and screens that are in place, it is very difficult to view the hole that was left by the destruction of the towers, but there are some very impressive displays available for viewing.  Above ground are displays of pictures from that day, tributes and a timeline of events…and below ground is a display of pictures, drawings and paintings from the children who lost parents that day.

 

We hit the road after a couple hours at Ground Zero…promptly got lost after leaving the Holland Tunnel entering New Jersey…finally found I-80 and headed west.

 

After an overnight stay in Youngstown, OH…we had driven through Pennsylvania in the dark so no report on the scenery of the Keystone State…but we did get off the interstate and stopped in the burg of Sandusky, OH on the shores of Lake Erie.  The downtown riverfront area was very quiet that morning and the marina was empty so most people had obviously prepared for the north wind off Lake Erie and closed up shop for the winter.  But, there is a major amusement park there on the water and you can imagine that this quaint downtown area would be a great place to spend a summer afternoon.

 

Upon leaving Sandusky, we traveled across the states of Indiana (it was too late to side trip to South Bend) and Illinois before stopping for the night in the Quad Cities…the Quad Cities is an area made up of Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa and Moline and Rock Island in Illinois.

 

On the final leg of our trip we wanted to do something truly inspired by traveling the backroads…we wanted to find the World’s Largest Frying Pan.  After a couple phone calls to some friends who had access to the internet we found out that there are lots of “World’s Largest Frying Pans”…Rose Hill, NC…Long Beach, CA and Selbyville, DE just to name a few…the closest one for this trip was in Brandon, IA.  Now this little adventure took us an hour off the interstate through the hills of eastern Iowa, but it was a beautiful day and the last of the crops were being harvested, so it was actually a great drive…and my brother and I decided we definitely had a story to tell years from now about driving around eastern Iowa looking for the World’s Largest Frying Pan…it somehow just makes us sound crazy.  We found it…laughed at our selves a little…then another car from out-of-state pulled up to take pictures and we suddenly felt justified for traveling an hour off the interstate to look at a frying pan.

 

The balance of the trip went without incident…there isn’t much to see between Des Moines and Omaha…and we arrived physically and emotionally unscathed.

 

I figure my brother will handle about 6-months of the quiet of Omaha and I’ll be driving him back to New York City during the summer…but this time I want to find the World’s Largest Ball of Twine.