I just got back from a quick road trip I took with some friends to go out to Iowa. We were going out to Iowa to celebrate our friend Val's 21st birthday. We knew Val because she was Mark's old girlfriend and we stayed at her apartment on our way home from LA on spring break. Right before we left we decided to go a day early and spend a night at this girls apartment in Indiana. This girl went to high school with Peter and she told us they were going to have a party for us there.
Do to general apathy, I didn't bother to take the day we were leaving off work so I had to work until 6pm. We left Ann Arbor at like 6:30 and after a few illegal U-Turns we got to IU around midnight. I guess a party at IU is 5 people sitting around watching Homeward Bound and drinking. This girl ended up living like 2 miles from campus and in an apartment with no college students. Other than drink all of their Blue Moon there wasn't much else to do. So after only a few hours in Bloomington we decided to saddle up and hit the road. By request Peter decided to stay at his friends apartment with no way to get back to Ann Arbor. We hung out and got travel tips from some Mexicans that were hanging out and drinking in the Gazebo in the courtyard. Then we were off to the great state of Iowa. After a hearty breakfast at the Perkins in Peoria we continued west to Iowa City.
We got there at like 10am, and after watching Aladdin everyone was ready for a napski. But I had some stuff to do so I went to go see campus and meet some of the heartlands finest. I can say the the University of Iowa has an amazing campus. It has the old State Capitol before it was moved to Des Monies, a river and a top notch bus system. But the coolest thing about Iowa City was the campus's downtown district. It was far superior to Ann Arbor's. Instead of just a few streets of stores and bars (north State Street, Main and South U) They had a really cool three block downtown area with shops restaurants and bars. Because 19 year-olds can enter bars, there really isn't much of a house party scene. Everyone just goes out to the bars, and the bars are all within a few block of each other. Part of the downtown is blocked off to a pedestrian mall, that ends up like Greenwood during a block party but instead of houses there are bars, and instead of cops there are food vendors. The bars there are ginormus. One of the bars we ended up going to had at least 600 people in it. It was crazy considering it was a Thursday night during finals week. Iowa just had such a nice feel to it, and it seemed like a very fun campus, that I would love to visit again but I can imagine that the bars are a bit more expensive than the red solo cup in the 500 count bag.
I really like road trips because I can see the country and now enjoy the "TRUCKS" flag Ross bought at the worlds largest truck stop and the 28$ worth of illegal fireworks I now possess.
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