Clare had two schools on her list in Indiana, on the way to Iowa, and we visited both of them today, but didn’t stop. Neither were a school she felt she’d be comfortable it. I guess that’s what this trip is all about — finding places she wants to live for 4 years. If the architecture is not to her liking, then why stop?

It was not really a wasted day — we stopped at Target in Champaign-Urbana and bought some traveling music and purses and a cooler. I guess we needed a rest from visiting colleges — at least Clare got to rest. I had to drive!

We’re in Galesburg, Illinois now. We’ll visit Knox College tomorrow morning, then head to Mount Vernon, Iowa and hopefully get to tour Cornell College. She’s got another school or two in Iowa, so we’ll probably scoot by those and then head to Elgin for a couple of days before heading back home (by way of a few more campuses).

We had a nice dinner of non-road food, recommended to us by a Dean at the college (we bumped into him outside the college when we were looking at it and he told us where the better hotels were as well.

Oh, and here is what we are missing by being away from Bethesda:

Note received via our neighborhood email list:

If you live in the area of [street names] and have found that the whole area reeks recently, here’s the reason: there’s a dead deer in my backyard. I don’t know where the deer came from, how it died, or why it was I was lucky enough to have it die in my backyard. We first smelled the odor on Tuesday, I discovered the deer on Wednesday (it’s in a hidden area in my backyard), and called Montgomery County Animal Control Wednesday afternoon. They say it will take them one to two days from the time of my phone call to remove the animal from my property. I’m happy they agreed to remove it at all, as otherwise I would not have known what to do. …