West Virginia, The Studebaker Museum, and the Coolest Thing about Iowa

In order to get caught up with our itinerary, we needed to try to get 700 miles under our belts the first day. That’s a pretty long haul, but we were up early, excited to be on the way and relieved to have Penny back in the game. Our route took us through western Virginia and through the mountains of West Virginia. Bob and I spent five years in West Virginia just after Bob graduated from law school and passed the Bar Exam. We used to joke that it was great to climb the corporate ladder in West Virginia because there were less people on it, and while that was somewhat accurate, we both were able to master skills that would have taken us much longer in other places. Part of that was because the CEO of the hospital we worked for was inclined to hire people with less experience and train them to his preferences. So, Bob, fresh from law school, with only summer internships at West Virginia law firms under his belt, was able to become the General Counsel of a hospital, giving him an amazing education that might have taken years to get elsewhere. And I was able to create one of my favorite all time jobs in nursing there.

I was hired as a nurse to work in the Health Connection, a Wellness Center placed in the local mall. It was comprised of walls of free health information brochures and was mostly attended by people who wanted to use the bathroom. At that time, West Virginia had the handicap of being one of the least healthy states in the nation. My job consisted of planning community health screenings, providing educational classes and finding and training volunteers. One day, a teacher in the local school's 5th grade called me and asked if I would come to his class and talk to his students about the dangers of smoking, and the benefits of eating healthy and exercising. I was so excited! I had always believed that working with children would be the most effective way to attack such issues. But I didn’t want to be boring, and I didn’t want to lecture. So I hit on the idea of getting a fatty beef heart from the local butcher, and dissecting it for the kids while talking about how too much fat and smoking would affect the heart. However, while I find dissecting things very cool, I didn’t account for the little girl who turned pale and nearly passed out during my presentation. Clearly I needed a different plan. One evening, I was teaching a class on how to manage arthritis to a group of women, and I mentioned my dilemma to the group. A class member, who was a gifted seamstress, agreed to build me a costume of a heart with doors that would open, showing blood flow patterns and valves, that I could wear while talking about how the heart worked and how it would struggle in the face of poor nutrition, exercise and cigarette use. I was also able to find the tights and leotard used by my idol Slim Goodbody (from Captain Kangaroo), showing the veins and arteries of the arms and legs. A head piece for an aorta completed the costume, and for one amazing year I was able to go to elementary schools all over West Virginia, putting on my show called ‘Straight from the Heart!’ It was a blast and one of my best jobs ever.

West Virginia is a beautiful state, green and mountainous, with great roads and less traffic than its cousin, Virginia. As we passed through Beckley, near the New River Gorge and that magnificent bridge, we remembered why we had loved living there so much. Almost Heaven, indeed.

By the end of that first day on Thursday, we had made it through 700 miles to Indianapolis, Indiana, and tired but satisfied, we checked into a Holiday Inn for a night’s rest.

One of the things Bob had been most looking forward to was the Studebaker Museum in South Bend Indiana. I had initially thought we were going to have to forego that stop, as it looked to add another 3 hours to the north of Indianapolis but we made so much progress our first day that it seemed we could make it work. That is, if Bob would agree to spending only two hours there, which he did, both of us knowing that would really mean three. So, after a quick breakfast on Friday, we repacked Penny and headed north.

The Studebaker Museum is dedicated to all things Studebaker as South Bend is the home of the brand. Bob’s family owns a 1911 Studebaker in need of some serious attention, and the museum has a huge collection of Studebakers. The picture above showing the blue two-seater is what the Bray car should look like. Someday. Bob was a kid in a candy store, and actually crawled under several of the display cars to get pictures. I suspect they were watching his every move on cameras, but realized he was harmless. Studebaker had started with horse-drawn carriages. I had not known that the vehicle that took Lincoln to the play that fateful night was a Studebaker, and the actual carriage was on display. I enjoyed all the beautifully restored cars and my favorite was the cream colored one posted above which reminds me of The Great Gatsby.

After we left the Museum, we headed off toward Iowa, as we still had one more day to make up before our reservation at Mt. Rushmore. This was the worst part of the trip for traffic as we navigated around Chicago. Our GPS came up with the bright idea of sending us on a detour promising to save us 30 minutes, which took us through a terrifying section of Gary Indiana where boarded up houses and cars on blocks missing important body parts had Penny shuddering. At one point we saw this very weird sign in the middle of a deserted field. But we made it back to civilization and resolved to avoid detours in big cities.

Up until this trip, I had always thought the coolest thing about Iowa was the movie Field of Dreams. Because Kevin Costner, of course. But also because of the premise of that movie, set in Iowa, that if one just looks and listens carefully, one will be guided to the path they were meant to take. I have to confess that I am mostly agnostic, but while I question everything, I do at times feel that if I just slow down and listen, I am directed to my path. Anyway, that was how I saw Iowa.

But on this trip, I saw something much more secular, but just as cool. Maybe more so, because Field of Dreams is just a movie, but this was real. As you drive along I80, minding your own business, suddenly, off in the distance, you see them. Windmills. They look small at first. Three white blades on a tall base spinning so slowly that at first you might think they are stopping. And as you get closer, they get larger and larger, until they seem otherworldly, almost like something from another planet. They stand over 500 feet tall, making them about as tall as the Washington Monument. They can be mesmerizing, and I wouldn’t recommend watching too long if you are driving. There are fields and fields of them, many standing in long regiments far from the highway, but some so close you could reach out and touch them. These wind turbines generated over 57% of Iowa’s clean-energy electricity in 2020.

Finally, we made it to South Dakota, and spent the night in Sioux Falls. South Dakota has a speed limit of 80, and while Bob found that exhilarating, it took me a while to get used to. There are definitely weird things to look at by the road while you blast past at high speed in South Dakota, and I guess the low traffic helps to keep the accidents down. Tomorrow, we head for Mt. Rushmore.