CalExpeditions

Category: 2026 Coast to Coast

  • Peoria Discovered, More Than a Meme

    Peoria Discovered, More Than a Meme

    Illinois is a bright, sunny place with mild temperatures. Heading from west to east, it starts flat and then turns hilly. I drove past the town of Champaign, which is home to a state college, and on to Kickapoo State Park. I learned that Kickapoo has nothing to do with the elimination of bodily waste.

    Flat as pancake illinois blends into gentle rolling hills.

    To the extent that anyone thinks of it at all, Peoria is usually considered a mythological place, like Atlantis or the fountain of youth. It is meant to evoke thoughts of middle America. However, I have discovered that it is an actual city! A small one, to be sure, but with streets, traffic signals and mid-rise office buildings.

    Peorians are quite taken with entomology and have several downtown buildings devoted to caterpillars.

    Aside from its role representing mainstream America, it also claims Abraham Lincoln as one of its sons. Lincoln, as you may recall, served as President of the US in the 1860s. It is notable that he failed to complete two terms, despite being elected twice. This feat places him in company with William McKinley and Richard Nixon.

    Peorians were obliged to construct a large, multi-story building as a home for this giant mural of Lincoln.
    For unknown reasons, Peoria has sculptures of bison, despite being far from Wyoming.

    So, in any event, Peoria actually exists. I have photos to prove it

  • Nebraska & Iowa

    Nebraska & Iowa

    Nebraska and Iowa are essentially the same place. It is a mystery why they’re treated separately by many. I’ll lump them together and call them Nebowa.

    The management of agri-business have forgotten to harvest their crops, leaving them to waste away in the fields. This will negatively impact profitability.

    Nebowa is a gray, overcast place with a lot of rain. If you’re planning on visiting (which you aren’t), be sure to pack your rain jacket. Otherwise you’ll have to buy one at the Base Exchange at Offutt AFB.

    Lots of clouds in Nebowa.

    Similarly, be sure to check your wiper blades. If you don’t renew them at home, you’ll have to while on the road.

    Did you know that wiper blades are designed to fail at the exact spot where your eyes look out the windshield? They are.

    Also, did you know that Sprinter vans have special “wet” wiper blades that are only sold at Mercedes dealers? They do.

    You will be in luck, though, because the Omaha Mercedes dealer handles Sprinters (most don’t) and they have wiper blades in stock! They’ll even install them for free! Marvelous!

    The van, aka the Shuttlecraft, stand ready to shield us from the rain.

    Also, be aware that Nebowa is quite windy. Crosswinds, in fact. Do not be startled when your vehicle’s anti-crosswind feature activates with a terrible noise and vibration. This is considered normal.

    The eastern part of Nebowa is unnecessarily hilly. This negatively impacts the region’s agricultural productivity. If one were to have a giant rolling pin, applied with sufficient vigor, one could smooth out the hills and increase the proportion of usable land, as was done with Kansas.

    Xena, the Warrior Princess, disapproves of the rain and elects to observe from inside.
  • Coast to Coast

    Coast to Coast

    I’m off on another epic journey: Oakland to East Haven (Connecticut) to see new parts of the country and have some mods done to the van. And I got my blog working again! Technical notes for curious gear heads at the bottom; normal people can safely ignore them.

    This house is Buckland’s Station. Built in 1860, it was a remount station for the Pony Express and a general store for the soldiers at nearby Fort Churchill, Nevada.
    This curious round courthouse in Lovelock, Nevada was designed by a famous architect I had never heard of and immediately forgot.
    Atoms for Peace! I visited the first breeder reactor. It creates more fuel than it consumes, thus demonstrating that there is a perpetual motion machine!
    People were silly in the 1950s. This was an early experiment is creating a nuclear powered aircraft engine. Any wonder why it never flew?
    Spent a couple of days in Idaho Falls. It is a pleasant little town in Idaho.
    Did you know the name of”Idaho Falls” came before the waterfalls? It did and remained an aspirational statement until the waterfalls were constructed out of concrete and artfully placed boulders.
    This was my front yard for a night…Antelope Lake, Oregon.

    Xena takes a hike

    The promised technical note: When I started this blog years ago, I had no idea how to do it. Naturally, I got a great many things wrong, like hosting it at Bluehost, installing a ton of plugins I didn’t need and getting the commenting feature wrong. So, I decided to fix it all and host it on my own machine. It turned out that removing all of Bluehost’s tentacles from the site was tedious and took much longer than I anticipated. But now it is done! (I think.)