DAY 7

We drove Meredith to the airport this morning and then headed back to the University of Minnesota to meet the Rock the Vote tour bus for a rally. We couldn’t find the rally and soon learned that the event had been cancelled. Fortunately, the campus was teeming with students registering voters and eager to talk about their work on camera.

We were back on the road by late afternoon and headed for Iowa City where we have an interview tomorrow at the University of Iowa.

If you’ve ever taken a long-distance road trip, you know that dining choices along the interstates can be quite repetitive. Determined to avoid such culinary monotony, we’ve been using Healthy Highways, a guidebook that lists health food stores and vegetarian-friendly restaurants in all 50 states. We had picked out two potential dinner spots from the guide, but then realized that we would not arrive in Cedar Rapids or Iowa City tonight before closing time. So, we decided that we might as well eat at a KenTaco Bell (Kentucky Fried Chicken combined with a Taco Bell) near Clear Lake, Iowa. We should have taken the hint when the guy making our burritos kept shouting to his colleagues as he scraped the bottom of a cardboard barrel: “I TOLD you we needed to order more beans.” Definitively, the worst burritos in Iowa. Our dismay was tempered after a stop at Wendy’s for frosties and a visit to the adjacent gas station where we bought postcards and an array of laminated study sheets for subjects such as: Spanish; Bartending; The 50 States; and Stain Removal.