I got up at 06:30 to go for a slow 3 mile run – by the time I got going I found that the temperature was already in the low 20’s. It also proved to be a run of many stops due to the number of busy intersections I needed to stop at the lights for. This was a little frustrating as it meant I never really got to find a rhythm, but I did do 4 miles due to this instead.

Back at the hotel I quickly showered and had breakfast so I could get packed for the next journey – today we’d be driving north through Iowa and into Nebraska to the small town of Wayne. We got on the road at 09:00 and began the long journey. To start with the road swiftly took us into Missouri and this continued for quite some time.

Before leaving Missouri behind us we stopped at a truck stop and bought some fudge for the customer, and also got a few supplies to keep us going until lunch time. Shortly after this stop we crossed over the border into Iowa and carried on driving along the interstate until we reached Omaha.

The area in Omaha where we parked had cobbled streets – it’s an area with plenty of food places and the one we were going to have lunch at was the Upstream Brewery – a place that specialises in beer, but also has a reasonable food menu. I went for a Chicken BLT without the tomato, so really it was more like what we’d call a “Chicken New Yorker”.

After lunch we were back on the road for a couple more hours. After Omaha a lot of the scenery was very similar – mostly corn fields. Eventually we left Iowa behind us and crossed into Nebraska and eventually arrived in the small town of Wayne.

By American standards it is a very small town where at last count the population was around 5,660 – a lot of which were likely employed by or attending Wayne State College. Other than the college there are not many buildings which are large.

The Cobblestone hotel I was staying at was on the outskirts of town, but due to the size of the town it meant that we were also no further than about 2 miles from the other side of town. This presented me with something of a question – my marathon training plan suggested I run 8.5 miles for the next day and this would mean I could actually run from the east to west limits of the towns and still not run far enough, I’d have to get creative with a route, or accept that I’d be running along a fairly major road (albeit with far less traffic than any of the roads I encountered in Kansas City).

For the next hour or so I caught up on activity from the office, before we headed out to eat at The Max. This of course was a every short drive and before we ate I took a few photos of the area. Whilst taking photographs a Monarch Butterfly fluttered passed me and landed on the road. I took a couple of photographs and then let the butterfly step onto my finger – I then took it over to some flowers, and tried to convince it to step off and onto them so I could take more pictures with a better background.

The food at the Max was all fried, but it was also every cheap. They offered hamburgers at under US$2, so I went for a double hamburger and then ordered a cup of Coca-cola. The food wasn’t that bad even if it was greasy, but it was still better than some places I’d eaten.

After the food I then walked back to the hotel by myself – I wanted to see what buildings I could photograph and in doing so I photographed a couple of the churches along the route and then continued passed the hotel so I could photograph the water tower that had a “Wayne America” sign on it.

Back at the hotel I then relaxed for the remainder of the evening and also caught up on some more work.