From -22° to 25° in one day

Yesterday I drove from Portage, Indiana, to Iowa City, Iowa. I was lucky enough to stay last night at Prairie Hills Cohousing.  I was greeted by Michele, an original member, and then settled into the "Nancy Drew Guestroom." From what I could tell, Iowa City is mostly a university campus. Even though it was frigid out, downtown was busy with students walking everywhere. I found a great art gallery and discovered a huge selection there of Motawi tiles. I just love when I see stuff made in Ann Arbor when I travel. One time I was in a small town in Spain in a paper store and found art kits made by Colorbok, a company just down the street from us on Little Lake.

Val and my frozen pants

    Prairie Hill just opened in March 2018 so is in its infancy as a community. They are a 3rd sold and are their own developers. I shared some marketing ideas with them and other things about Ann Arbor cohousing that works well for us, like our work hours and multigenerational activities. Right now they are all older folks, with no young families. I couldn't imagine Touchstone without our kids and young parents. They make all our lives so much richer. I enjoyed a delicious community dinner and then watched a movie with a dozen or so folks in the common house. Everyone was so welcoming. Their common house is 2 stories, with a number of small studio apt. units on the second floor. I think its a brilliant idea. The owners of one of the units, Val and John, have decorated so beautifully and gave me some good ideas for my basement space. I'm hoping to see John, and maybe some of the others, at the Coho conference in Portland in May. One really funny thing that happened was when I brought it the pants I had washed out in the morning and laid in the back of the car to dry. Needless to say, they didn't dry but instead froze solid. They literally could stand up on their own.

    It was -22° when I awoke this morning. But, after getting reassurances from the Subaru dealer that my car would be just fine, I hit the road. And, it was just fine. There was a small stretch of strong wind blowing snow around, but basically the highway was dry. Slowly, as I headed west, the temperature rose, and eventually, somewhere in Nebraska, the snow disappeared. I was doing so well, in fact, that I didn't stop as originally planned at 4 pm, and drove all the way to North Platte where its a balmy 25°. Tonight I'm in a Rodeway Inn, comfortable and warm. I'm remembering back in 1976 when Ray and I drove cross country and I was reading the book Colorado by Michener. There was a lot about the Platte River and tonight, I'm sleeping just down the road from the river. I'm thinking maybe its time to reread that book.
What I learned today: 1. Cohousers are the best!; 2. don't get the pretzel crust pizza at Little Caesars, and 3. there's a lot of windmill farms and cattle farms in Nebraska.