OK, we arrived home at 5:29pm, yesterday afternoon. We were gone 22 days and drove 6,183 miles across 15 states. We got exactly 25.0 MPG while averaging 56.6 MPH for the entire trip (those 80 MPH speed limits in Texas and Utah helped make-up for all those gravel roads we had to drive on in Northern Michigan and in Iowa, getting to all those covered bridges).
Speaking of those covered bridges, we had a great day on Monday visiting Winterset, IA, birthplace of John Wayne and home of the 'Bridges of Madison County'.
June 2019 (Sony a6000)
We also encountered what could only be called a real character who had a sort of unofficial car museum. While I was taking a picture of the city's veteran's memorial, he just walked-up and asked us if we would like to see some old cars. We walked across the street to his old tire store where he had some half-dozen old cars, including a 1915 Ford Model-T Speedster:
June 2019 (Sony a6000)
And an actual REO Speed Wagon:
June 2019 (Sony a6000)
June 2019 (Sony a6000)
As for the 'bridges', we visited five of the six covered bridges found in the county. Here's one that's representative of what they all generally look like. This one's called the 'Hogback Bridge' and was built in 1884.
June 2019 (Sony a6000)
Except for a few days of heavy rain, the weather wasn't too bad. In fact, most days it was nice traveling weather, not too cold and not too hot, except on our last day on the road, yesterday (Wednesday). Our last leg of the trip was from Green River, UT, down thru Las Vegas and across the Mojave Desert to SoCal. When we passed by Baker, CA, which is located about halfway between Las Vegas and SoCal and is where you turn to head toward Death Valley, they have a 100+ foot tall thermometer which indicated 111º when we passed by (as seen below):
June 2019 (Apple iPhone 8 )
Note that this matched exactly what my on-board thermometer showed at that moment. However, about 20 miles further down the road, our on-board thermometer indicate that the temp had gone up to 114º. By the time we got home, the temp was down to about 80º and it was actually quite nice once the sun went down. Today, it only got up to about 75º.
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