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The Neverending Road Trip

In early July, I got a call. The first words out of my mom's mouth were "Your dad says he'll take the dog." Lovely. After desperate pleas from my mother, I agreed to take her to a conference in Nashville. She'd been planning to go with a friend, but said friend's husband had open heart surgery the day before they were supposed to leave. I had to abandon my newly planted grass and make the long drive to Minnesota. Since it's summer, my usual hotel in the Black Hills was booked up and I took a new route through Montana to Miles City.



The Montana route is a bit longer, but it doesn't involve the road to nowhere through South & North Dakota, so...bonus! Also, Montana has much better speed limits and better scenery. I got up in Miles City and headed to the post office to renew my passport. A helpful man named Jim took my photo and helped me fill out the application. The renewal rates went up the following day, so I took the opportunity while I could. It's all about the planning, people. Then it was off through Montana and North Dakota's Badlands on a delightful road called a freeway.



As usual, I traveled across North Dakota and then sat parked on the freeway in Fargo. On a positive note, I didn't have time to get angry about the traffic because I was in the middle of a teleconference at the time. I learned on the radio that some smart construction person had closed two lanes instead of just one causing all sorts of problems. Anyway, at some point I made it across the bridge into Minnesota.



The next day, my mother and I left for the Twin Cities where I hit the library to do some work and pick up some reading materials. We spent the night in their apartment and took off the next day for the Amana Colonies - Best known for making lovely things like air conditioners.



We stayed at a very nice B&B where the owner's husband had died just hours before our arrival. So dead guy downstairs, grieving family members and a broken internet connection. Not good. I felt incredibly awkward the entire two days we were there. We spent one evening in a bar with wifi so I could work and several hours the next day at the library so I could work some more.

Finally, we got to leave and got on I-80. This left me extremely frustrated since I live off of I-80 and had now driven about 600 miles out of the way to get back to it. Then we headed south where Missouri welcomed us.



We continued on to St. Louis where we briefly thought we had missed the Arch. My mother got quite upset about how I should have taken the other freeway when up ahead we saw the arch. Then we saw Busch Stadium. My mother wouldn't let me go to the game that night, so we continued on to Illinois.

Worrying about rush hour St. Louis traffic, I didn't snap this picture


We escaped Illinois to hit a massive storm in Kentucky. Should you ever encounter a little (okay, a lot of) rain in Kentucky, you're supposed to completely panic, turn on the emergency lights and pull over. I kept going. It wasn't like a tornado was heading our way. We finally got to Paducah where we spent the night before the thankfully short drive to Nashville.

Due to the rain and trying not to die, I didn't take a picture of this sign.

The remainder of this tale to be continued...

posted by E @8:16 PM