A drive to Wisconsin

We celebrated John’s birthday a day early—dinner at the Havana House, with Chloe at her appointed seat. On his birthday, it was packing day. In hot, humid Florida, packing is a real chore, but we finally finished up and made it an early bedtime—with a 6:30 planned start the next morning. Right on time, we were off with clear skies. The weather forecast for the entire drive wasn’t great- lots of rain forecast, but we lucked out on day one and got into Athens, AL at 4:30. We had a little happy hour in the motel then found a local restaurant for dinner. I was out by 9:00 while Mom stayed up to watch the finale of Grey’s Anatomy.
Up the next morning at 5:30, breakfast at 6:00 and we were on the road again. We had great weather for most of the trip- until the last hour. With 60 miles to go, the skies poured on us. We made a brief stop, thought about calling it quits for the day—then the rain let up and we decided to give it a shot. We finally made it to Mendota, IL and it was freezing! Cold, damp and chilly. The hotel clerk told us to give the truckstop/restaurant across the road a try for dinner. They had a buffet and menu option. What she didn’t tell us about was the side-show we’d have watching the largest people in the world gorging themselves on the buffet. We were amazed at the never ending parade of really big people. We were truly in mid-America.
Our last day- a shorter drive – and we made it to Lake Viola at 1:30. We got the car unpacked and thought we were ahead of the game…until, we found that the furnace wasn’t turning on. With a forecast of freezing weather for the night, we were depressed. It was Saturday night and we had to try to find a repairman. We finally found someone willing to come out – it was a process of bleeding the air out of the lines. While he worked, we stopped at the hamburger bar and picked up some burgers for dinner.
With 3 days to go, we attacked the boxes room by room and by Tuesday afternoon, we were all done and it was feeling like “home” again. On Wednesday- it was a nuclear start—we had to be in Rice Lake by 6:45 am for me to catch the shuttle to the MSP airport. It was an uneventful trip—just lots of spare time in the airport. We arrived at the airport at 8:30 and the flight didn’t take off until 12;55. Memories of those awful travel days when we were working….unending hours at the airport. We finally took off, had a minor maintenance issue keeping us on the runway for 20 minutes, and had a nice flight- until we hit Florida. The thunderstorms bounced the plane like an amusement park ride and it was a white-knuckled ride all the way into Orlando. Then, I still had 2 hours of drive time to get home. Rock Crusher never looked so good.