Road trip

We took the Benster back down to Galesburg for school over the weekend, a mostly uneventful trip. A few brief observations:

• We stayed in Moline and as a result got a little dose of the carpet bombing of political ads that are running in the Iowa market. There are times I wish that Minnesota got a little more attention from the national campaigns, but this is not one of those times. Based on an admittedly small sample size, it became clear that Jeb Bush's Super PAC has decided to destroy Marco Rubio and make the rubble bounce. Not sure it's going to help Jeb any, but it's interesting to see. Ted Cruz is also on the air a fair amount and Hillary is ubiquitous. I think Hillary has reason to be nervous about Bernie Sanders in Iowa and her constant ad presence suggests that she knows it.
• We ended up spending a little time at the SouthPark Mall in Moline, which features an interesting selection of major department stores, including a Von Maur and a Dillard's, a department store chain that's concentrated more in the southern tier. The mall itself was a bit of a ghost town and I continue to wonder about the fate of traditional brick and mortar retailers; one would expect things to be a little more lively at 6:30 p.m. on a Saturday evening.
• We also tried Chick-fil-A for the first time. They are now entering the Twin Cities market but they don't have any locations that are in our immediate vicinity. I wouldn't want to eat it every day, and you can't because they are closed on Sundays, but I will say that the sandwich I had was straight up delicious. I think Chick-fil-A will do well here.
• Gas prices are fantastic at the moment. We paid $1.59/gallon in Clear Lake, Iowa, and we ended up spending less than $60 on gas for this journey, which totals about 850 miles round-trip. These prices won't last, but it's certainly helped ease some of the other expenses involved in taking your son to college.
• I also heard a few football games happened over the weekend. Maybe we'll talk about those later on.