Whether it's two days or two weeks or two months, there is nothing like the feeling of walking through your front door, sleeping in your own bed, bathing in a tub which hasn't been used by hundreds of strangers.

Actually, traveling to a larger city just makes you appreciate what you have even more. And because we live in smaller communities, traveling out of town is inevitable. Even if you manage to shop local all the time, you still hav to venture forth to visit relatives -- whether you want to or not.

It's following these trips that you truly learn to appreciate the positives about your hometown, especially if it's a smaller town.

Every time I travel to a large city, the first thought that goes through my mind is "I don't miss the traffic."

Mind you that I grew up in Omaha and thought nothing of spending 20 minutes driving to a restaurant. But now it's hard to convince me that the three minute drive for food is worth the effort, and that's if I get delayed behind a tractor on the highway. The thought of driving 20 mph for an hour, because of a traffic jam, rather than the legal speed limit makes me cringe.

Sure, sometimes we have to plan to leave the house 20 to 30 minutes before an appointment or an event, but it's not because there may be a traffic jam.

It's because we're traveling two towns away and need to stop for a bottle of pop before hitting the road.

Few things can get my blood boiling more than sitting through a green light, then a red light, then another green light because there are so many cars in front of you at the light. I like to assume that if I am stopped at a red light that my chances are nearly 100 percent that I'll get through the intersection during the next green light.

Just going out to eat or out shopping is completely different in a small town versus a larger city.

If you are out and about in a small town, you expect to run into someone you know. Any trip to the store should include an extra 15 minutes just to compensate for the conversation in every grocery aisle.

At the other extreme, I was sitting in a restaurant in Denver and glanced at every person who walked by table, expecting to know at least one of them. I kept reminding myself that I was one among millions and wouldn't see a familiar face until I ventured 300 miles to the east.

Not that everyone in a large city is unfriendly or distant. While sitting in a doctor's office in Denver with my 4-month-old, an elderly lady in the waiting room volunteered to hold my youngest daughter while I went to talk to the doctor. I thanked her for her generosity, but kept to myself that handing a small baby over to a complete stranger in a large city probably wasn't in my best interest.

Not everything about a large community is negative. In fact, venturing far from home lets you experience things you never would at home. Right now, the most noticeable difference are the political ads.

If you thought the political ads were nasty in Nebraska's Senate and 3rd District congressional races, then you should listen to those in Colorado.

Our politicians are bickering over who is going to find a couple of extra drips of water during the next session or save a couple of extra bucks over the next six years.

They have nothing on the Colorado politicians who run ads (and I'm not making this up) with genuine pigs snorting in the background, not in admiration of an opponent's connection to agriculture but rather in reference to the amount of pork-barrel spending the senator can direct to his or her constituents.

Even more outrageous were the ads mentioning Hitler, skin-heads and Stalin, all of whom would have attended his or her opponent's political rallies if they were able, because they all share the same ideas.

As my husband and I listened to these ads during a recent trip to Colorado, we looked at each other in disbelief.

We actually thought they were spoofs on political ads, but soon realized that they were the real deal when the standard "... and I approve this message ... " tag line came across the radio at the end.

Of course by the time I had heard the ads for the fourth or fifth time, they were just as tiring and irritating as our local political ads. I was ready to head home to the land of animal-free political commercials.

-- Ronda Graff would only run for elected office if she could somehow use her yak in her campaign ads.