More Road Trips

Beach or Bust

Five of us spent spring break ’07 in Panama City, Fla. Three of us were taking an overnight bus from Omaha, which seemed reasonable until a huge blizzard threatened our plans. We dug my car out of the snow and drove on a closed interstate, arriving in Omaha at 2 a.m., just in time to find out the bus was delayed. After an eight-hour wait in the bus station and 50 hours on the bus, finally we made it to Florida!

Elizabeth Heiberger ’08
SIOUX FALLS, S.D.

Sea Escape

Freshman year, four friends and I drove to the West Coast for a music festival. We ate nothing but Mike ‘n’ Ike candy and snuck into campgrounds and church parking lots to sleep (police chased us off). When we got to the ocean—which some of us had never seen—we stripped to our underwear and went for a swim. Freezing, we returned to find our clothes, which we’d left on the hood of the car, gone! Thankfully, some local pranksters had only hidden our stuff—saving it from really being stolen, they said.

Mark Alsum ’09
ALTON, IOWA

RA Rally

During midterm break, the Steggy RAs from 2007–08 road-tripped to Upland, Ind., to visit our former RD, Sara James. We called it a “Retired RA Reunion.”

Sarah Connolly ’09 and Julia Glendenning ’09
MOKENA, ILL. and GRETNA, NEB.

Scraping By

Freshman year four of us took a low-budget trip to Florida. Although it wasn’t actually that warm in the northern part of The Sunshine State, we camped, air-boated through a gator-filled marsh, toured the Everglades and swam with manatees in the ocean. Our ocean experience almost took the life of one friend—she managed to walk away just with cuts all over her body.

Samantha Johnson ’09
MOUNT PLEASANT, IOWA

Lake Break

Last spring break, four of us took my 1987 conversion van to Lake Powell on the Arizona-Utah border where we kayaked for almost a week and then drove home.

John Pribnow ’09
AMES, NEB.

Runnin’ Around

Last fall some runners borrowed a van to road trip to Kenosha, Wis., to watch cross country teammate Charity Miles compete at nationals. We arrived, parked near the train yard, and spent the evening around a bonfire. It was cold, but the four of us sleeping side-by-side in the van never noticed. The next day we watched Charity run and then drove eight hours home.

Lee Stover ’09
ADRIAN, MINN.

Extended Stay

In November a few friends and I drove to Kansas to spend the weekend with some other friends. On our way back Sunday, we stopped in Topeka for food, and the car died. Transmission failure. The car's owner called his dad in South Dakota to come get us, which left us with eight hours to kill. We walked to the mall, theatre, Barnes & Noble, and Perkins for supper. Our ride arrived around 9 p.m., and we drove to Vermillion, S.D., towing the other car and getting a police warning for non-functioning trailer lights in the process. We finally got back to Orange City at 3 a.m. tired but with memorable stories from our adventure.

Erica Graber ’12
MARION, S.D.