Cambridge, Oxford & surrounds

After leaving London on Friday we headed towards Cambridge for Bruce to have more meetings. We spent a little bit of time wandering the streets of Cambridge although given it is summer holidays a lot of the colleges were closed to tourists and the famous Kings College Chapel was closed for renovations. Despite not being able to get inside a lot of the buildings, Cambridge is still an amazing place to visit with very quaint narrow streets & an enormous amount of history & architecture.

We spent the next few nights staying with David (Nuffield Scholar) & his wife Katie whilst we had a busy few days touring the country side meeting with past scholars, farmers, businessmen & president of the NFU (National Farmers Union).

After leaving Cambridgeshire we headed to Oxford & again spent some time wandering around the city taking in the sights and endless old buildings (including the Corpus Chrisi College where parts of the Harry Potter movies have been set).

London at long last

After a fantastic time travelling through the US we arrived in London on Monday after another crappy flight with United (don't get me started again!). Once we arrived we were straight to The Farmers Club to check in & then off again for Bruce to meet with Macquarie. That night we managed to catch up with Steph for dinner in Notting Hill which was great to be able to see her again.

Tuesday we began our onslaught of the tourist sites: in two days we visited Downing St, changing of the Horse Guards, Buckingham Palace changing of the guards, Buckingham Palace summer opening of the state rooms, Trafalgar square, National Gallery, Banquet house (where Charles I was killed), Churchill Museum & Cabinet war rooms, Westminster Abbey, Houses of Parliament (including house of commons & house of lords), Big Ben, Brick Lane (known for its Indian restaurants), St Paul's Cathedral (climbed all 580 or so steps to the top & back down again), Globe Theatre, Tower Bridge, London Tower, London Eye, & Lords cricket ground. We also managed to fit in some time for shopping at Harrods & along Portobello Rd before heading to the West End Thursday night to see Jersey Boys which was fantastic.

The weather in London was fairly typical during our stay - we had everything from hot and sunny to freezing cold winds & miserable rain!! Despite hardly stopping to take a breath while we were there, we both had a great time in London & have definitely added it to the list of places to see again.

Washington DC

We arrived in Washington DC late Tuesday & had a great time staying with Hutch & Gemma. Wednesday was taken up with meetings with USDA and National Cattlemans Association but the rest of our stay we spent checking out the sites. We had a big day Thursday - we hired bikes from Thompson Boat Centre and road along the river to the National Mall. We then spent the day visiting the Washington Monument (tallest building in Washington at 555ft), the Postal Museum, Capitol Building (ask Bruce about his brush with the US police), the Lincoln Memorial, the National Library, and the Natural History Museum which houses the original American flag. Thursday night we also managed to catch up with another of Bruce's friends from school. Friday was a little less hectic - we hired bikes again and rode to Arlington Cemetery (American War Memorial) where we saw the Kennedy's grave, Arlington house, and tomb of the unknown soldier.

We had a great end to the US leg of our trip with our time spent with Gemma & Hutch. Saturday they took us for a drive over the Bay Bridge & we then spent some time looking around Annapolis - a cute little area set on the river/bay. Our very last day in the states was a stinker -(close to, if not more than 40degrees) although we had a great time watching the Nationals beat the Arizona Diamond Backs, luckily our seats were in the shade.

The corn fields of Iowa

On our travels from Sioux Falls we were lucky enough to visit & tour the Louis Dreyfus Ethanol Plant at Grand Junction. This plant has been open only a few months & we were treated to a personal tour of their facility which was fascinating.

The past four days we have been in the areas surrounding Waterloo, Iowa meeting with farmers who are passionate about their industry. We enjoyed our day Friday with Clay Mitchell (a real technology buff) and then with Ben Riensche touring parts of his farm. Ben & his family welcomed us into their home for dinner and it was really nice to have a home cooked meal and spend some time with a family again.

Saturday we took a break from farming and drove to Hazelton to see the Amish villages, and then onto Amana which was an original German colony which now is designed for the tourists with lots of gift shops, cheese & wine tasting, a brewery and restaurants.

Sunday we had another fantastic day enjoying another meal with Ben & his family before visiting another farm operation at Hudson. Alan & his wife Sarah, along with his business partner Ted & wife Lynda hosted us for drinks around the camp fire & dinner with all food (excluding meat) coming fresh from Sarah's amazing vegetable garden - something to strive for at home!

Just a small detour!!!!

Some may think we're crazy (and for a brief moment we would agree with you) but after finishing off with some meetings earlier than expected we found we had a couple of spare days so decided to take a 1000 mile (1600km) detour to the opposite side of South Dakota to Mt Rushmore National Memorial. On the way we stooped off in Wall, to visit Wall Drug (it had been advertised about every half mile for the last 50 miles so we figured it was a must see) - it was a tourist trap but still a must see as a pharmacist. Wall Drug covered the block (& really was the only thing in town) and had everything from a small dispensary, kids toys, clothing (including cowboy boots & belt buckles), cafe, ice creamery, souvenirs, photo shop, jewelry, newsagency & believe it or not it had its own chapel!! I find it really hard explaining to the people we meet that I'm a pharmacist but I don't stand behind a glass screen & pass pills through a slot. It really makes you appreciate the situation we have in Australia with pharmacist ownership.

Bruce & I both enjoyed our time at Keystone visiting the Mt Rushmore National Memorial although we both agreed that it was by no means as spectacular as Yosemite National Park or the Grand Canyon (maybe it has something to do with the man made thing I'm not sure). Heading back east from Mt Rushmore we drove the Iron Mountain Rd which winds around through a series of tunnels, each tunnel framing the memorial, which was quite pretty. We also drove the Wildlife loop through Custer State Park and managed to see burros (similar to a mule or donkey), wild turkeys, bison buffalo & plenty of deer. Our last detour for this trip was through the Badlands State Park - a very unique landscape for South Dakota - almost like a mini grand canyon with sand stone instead of the red rock & then opening out into wide open grass plains.

Our last stop on our big detour across the state was in Mitchell to see the International Corn Palace. Again this was a bit of a tourist trap but interesting none the less. Essentially a big building with murals made from cobs of corn (murals being redesigned and replaced each year).

Finally we arrived in Sioux Falls Wednesday night.

Rising City, Nebraska

We made our home with Bart & Lynne Ruth in Nebraska for a very relaxing few days over the weekend. Between dinners and brunch and drinking margarita's in the pool we did manage to put some time into looking at Bart's farming operation & also had a look around a local 6000 head dairy. We really enjoyed our dinner Sunday night with Lynne, Bart & Bart's parents and owe them a big thank you for making us feel so welcome in their home.

(I should make one comment as this has confused some people we have spoken to at home who have been trying to track our travels: many places in the USA are named '........ City', this by no means reflects the size of the town & many of these 'cities' as they are called have a population from 500-1500 people).

After leaving Rising City we drove back to Lincoln for Bruce to meet with Ken Cassmen, a climate change expert at the University of Nebraska & travelled onto Valentine, South Dakota.

Kansas City

After leaving West Lafayette, we headed back to Indianapolis & flew to Kansas City, Missouri. We were both pleasantly surprised by Kansas City & really enjoyed our time there. For what is essentially a big country town it had a great shopping area, bars, restaurants & art museum. During our few nights we sampled local BBQ, Chicago's famous deep dish pizza & had a fun night at Jardine's, a local jazz bar & restaurant. Bruce had a couple of meetings with Louis Dreyfus at the Kansas City Board of Trade which were extremely useful and I managed to boost the local retail economy (my favourites were a US kitchen/cooking supplies store which offered to freight things home for us & also found a great little designer bag boutique which will make to order & can design & buy online).