Adventures In Traveling

I had a great visit with my children this weekend and an interesting trip home with my husband (more on this later). This is a photo of Caitlin.

We arrived in Kirksville, Missouri (Truman State University) late Friday afternoon and had a short visit our with daughter Caitlin before she had to leave for the theater. Caitlin (assistant stage manager) wasn't going to be done until midnight because there was a photo shoot after the performance and our son Kyle wasn't going to arrive from Urbana, Illinois until very late (he left after work and dinner), so we were on our own for the evening. We checked in at the hotel and then had dinner and a nice quiet evening (read that - husband Tom surfed between basketball games and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on TV).

Saturday morning we woke up to rain - lots and lots of cold rain. The kids slept in because they were both up late. In pouring rain, we went over to pick up Kyle for lunch before Caitlin went to the theater to get ready for the performance and to pick up our tickets for the show. We had a nice visit with Kyle.

Then we went back out into the rain (I thought we were going to turn into ducks!) to see the play that Caitlin had been working on. It was The Taming of the Shrew, but set and costumed in the 1950's. It was fun and well enough done.

We had another chance to visit with Kyle while Caitlin helped tear down the set (it was the last performance). Then we went back out in the rain and picked up Caitlin and her boyfriend Gabe and went out for a wonderful dinner at an Italian restaurant. I had a wonderful Chicken Marsala, just perfect! Then it was goodbye time. Kyle was to stay the night with Caitlin and take her grocery shopping and we were leaving early to come home.

Sunday morning we woke up to find that the rain had changed to light snow. By the time we were ready to leave it had stopped. So we checked the local weather and found out about flash flood warnings across the north of Missouri. Of course, this was the route we had to take. The rivers were all way up but not yet flooding and we made it the the Mississippi River and across to Illinois fine. We got to Macomb and it was my turn to drive. Galesburg - must be lunch time. It was still my turn to drive as we headed north.

The snow started. My husband informs me that "there could be white-out conditions all the way home" across the whole state (we live near Chicago). I was ready to bang my head against the steering wheel. Yes, we were to try to make it home!

The winds start first as we head north and it's a struggle to drive as the wind hits us broadside and tries it's best to push us off the road. Finally, we are heading west with the wind coming from behind and we stop at Hillsdale. No power equals no gas AND no working toilets! (sigh) I was thankful that it was now Tom's turn to drive. The snow is coming down, blowing and not quite a white-out but bad enough. We manage to get gas at Rock Falls. So we set out again with a man behind the wheel who thinks it's just fine to drive at eighty miles an hour in the snowing, blowing, sometimes white-out! I began to wish I was driving! We did make it home in one piece, but Tom and his driving had added at least 50 gray hairs to my head and took about a year off my life.

I needed extra chocolate when I got home!

The chocolate wrapper wisdom of the day is "Spending time is a greater gift than spending money."