It has been interesting blowing through all of these midwestern towns.  It has hammered into me the reality that I live in a very prosperous place in the USA, maybe the world.  The houses on the main are much more humble in a lot of these towns, and I don't see all the new cars that I see in Tacoma and Seattle.

I always admired John Cougar Mellencamp for his visions of the midwest.  I like Bob Seger for the same reason.  When I'm making some cursory judgement about how things are based upon casual observation, if I'm honest, I have to say that I probably bring some preconcieved notions into my judgement.  I guess that's OK as I'm not being nationally published and I acknowledge that my opinions may be grossly mistaken.

For breakfast we sat with a couple from Indiana.  They, like us, were on a vacation.  He is a retired plumber, and she worked for a stock broker.  They have five kids, all grown and they were a bit younger than us (I think).  When Kristi told them that we were musicians the first question from Deb was "do you play Christian music".  Kristi named the two Christian songs that we play and no more questions.  I knew we weren't going to talk politics.  I realize that folks who inhabit the big demographic, people who make the wheels in this country go, are not the same as we are.  

After seeing the relative poverty of the midwest, and the southwest I wonder how Trump managed to hornswoggle all of these people.  These are people who take it for granted that they will never need ga social safety net, and are convinced that they are paying for a lot of people who should have their sleeves rolled up and be working just like they are.  There's a certain arrogance there.  I blame it on the American dream and the idea that we all should live in a house with a 2 car garage, and maybe a swimming pool.  Debbie and Dan have a house on a lake.  I don't envy them.  They (especially Dan) have busted their asses to have what they've got.

We are on the last leg of our journey.  Tomorrow morning we will get into King Street Station in Seattle.  We're not totally sure how we will get to Tacoma, having more than one option but David G. thinks he can find us a ride from the Angle Lake light rail station.

Right now we are running over the plains of North Dakota.  It actually looks fairly prosperous to me, mostly agricultural land.  There's still a dusting of snow everywhere and lots of frozen water.

When we were in Canada I had little news.  There didn't seem to be any newspapers where we stopped and Via Rail definitely didn't have wifi.  Now I can get news if I want it through cell phone towers.  I even found a newspaper at a news stand in Albany, New York when they gave us a little time to get off of the train.  The only place we got off of the train on this leg of the journey there wasn't even a vending machine to get a can of pop, much less a news stand.  You've heard the term "sleepwalking into autocracy"?  I think that's what we're doing, and I've been doing my share of sleepwalking on this entire trip.  Time to wakey, wakey.