Sales taxes are much more prominent in the United States. Here’s a little video on the matter: In the UK, the sales tax, called VAT, is 20% on nearly all categories of goods (cue shocked expressions). Because prices on the shelf are…
Day 20 Part 2: Cincinnati, Ohio and a spot of lunch in Kentucky
We crossed into Ohio toward the middle of the day. It was quite hilly and covered in trees. We had a look around Cincinnati. It looked older but well maintained. It had some especially attractive religious buildings: It seemed like…
Day 20 Part 1: Incendiary Indianan Interstate Incidents
Indiana was, frankly, the worst experience we’ve had on the road. The roads were full of pot holes and aggressive drivers. As long term readers of the blog know, Chris still has no alien number sorted out, and therefore, if…
Day 19: Raging Rain in Illinois and Indiana
We weren’t able to see much of anything due to torrential rain: We did cross from Illinois to Indiana: Check out the video to see how we coped, plus Chris’s reaction to trying the chocolate cheese from Iowa:
Social Security, Maybe Part 2
Today, I mustered up the courage to look at my status on the USCIS (immigration) site. I was pleasantly surprised at the case status moving from ACCEPTED to OPTIMIZED. Another part of the status had been set to Pending for…
Day 18 Part 3: Onto Illinois
We ended the day by entering Illinois: Check out our video of our final impressions of Iowa and first impressions of Peoria, Illinois:
Day 18 Part 2: The Future Birth Place of Captain James T. Kirk
I must admit, the last stop of the day was our actual favorite, but definitely just for tourism purposes. We went to Riverside, IA: They have a little Star Trek museum there, run by an old woman who just…
Day 18 Part 1: Chocolate Cheese & Iowa City
We made our way across eastern Iowa to what turned out to be a total tourist trap. There are some small towns called the Amana Colonies. They were a series of villages settled by German pietists. In the modern day,…
Days 16-17: Des Moines, Iowa
We took a travel break to meet up with my parents. Several items hadn’t arrived by the time we left Wisconsin, including my state ID and our car insurance card (we had a temporary one, but it was only good…
Day 15 Part 2: En Dansk Vindmølle i Iowa
After Omaha, we headed back into Iowa. In the same way that Kansas is mostly a wheat field, Iowa is mostly a corn field. There was a lot of nothing for a while. We stopped int a small town called…