Des Moines, Iowa

Today's travel stats: 567 miles driven, average speed 66 miles per hour, driving time 8 hours 36 minutes. Which means we covered a lot of distance again from Ohio via Indiana and Illinois to Iowa. Still very cold, most of the day below 0 C, with snow flurries in the morning and some sunshine in the afternoon. Very strong winds, so strong that driving became strenuous. We are now staying at the Renaissance Savery Hotel in Des Moines. The city reminds me of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, just as inhospitable and cold. The pictures are of the State of Iowa's Capitol building.

The highlights today include: 1) DA got a truck-driver stalker. I was driving and DA spotted a cute truck driver and the cute driver spotted DA. After they smiled at each other, the truck was playing hide-and-seek with us, passing us at times and then slowing down again. For the rest of the day, DA wanted to go to every truck stop to try to find the cute driver. We even passed the "largest truck stop in the world Iowa 80" but didn't stop...2) a cute young Asian guy looking at us when we were checking in to the hotel. He was definitely interested but as we had to go to the room first to drop off our luggage nothing happened.