A Day is as a Thousand Miles

Well, I’ve finally gotten out of State College. Way outside of State College. Paul & Mario picked me up at 7:15, we drove up to the airport to rent the car (National gave us an Infiniti, some cross between a small SUV and large sedan, kinda resembling a tank, and we discovered it only gets 22 miles to the gallon – ARGH), and by the time we got back to campus to park Paul’s car and everything it was 8:15 by the time we left.
We made really good time, and to make a not-overly-interesting story short, 1030 miles and almost 17 hours later we’re at a motel somewhere north of Council Bluffs, Iowa (I think the town is Missouri Valley, Iowa) at a motel on the US 30 exit off of Interstate 29. Paul said it’s his second-longest one-day drive ever, and he only drove the first leg of it. 🙂 Needless to say though, we’re all pretty tired.
Paul just took a look at the models, and it’s looking pretty sweet for the next few days. We’re gonna get up pretty early and head for the Rapid City area, for likely chasing in southwestern South Dakota and northwestern Nebraska tomorrow. We’ll try to meet up with the DOWs in the early afternoon; they’re staying in Valentine, Nebraska tonight, and we’re figuring they’ll be heading north towards SD. Friday’s looking like eastern Nebraska and central Kansas is looking good for Saturday. Paul’s actually quite excited about the setup the next few days, and therefore so am I.
Well, time for bed. (All times of blog posts on this trip are Eastern.)