The Long Way Home

I made every attempt to leave the hotel in Granite Falls, Minnesota, by 4:00am...and I was rolling by 3:52!! I was hoping to make it to a co-worker's daughter's graduation party, which started at 1:00pm and ended at 6:00pm. And then, about 45 minutes on my way, I looked again at the Google Maps information only to see that the trip was estimated to take 8 hours and 44 minutes, not the 10 hours I originally believed it to be.... Getting up at 4:00 would have been SO much nicer!


This is what the Prairie's Edge Casino Resort hotel in Granite Falls, Min-
nesota, looks like at 3:51am.


Wisconsin


TRUCK!

From start to finish, I drove 3,475 miles from the parking lot at my office to the parking lot at my apartment 11 days later. Through Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin, I encountered dozens of highway construction zones. Not one of them slowed or stopped me -- that is, until I reached my home state of Illinois. And this wasn't minor congestion; I was STOPPED for as much as five minutes at various times.


This would've been a good time to knit that sweater I've always wanted
to learn how to knit so I could make.*

I finally bailed after about two miles of crawling at a pace slower than a baby's crawl! I took a state road east about 15 miles and then hit US 14, which took me to my co-worker's house. The sloppy joes were ta die for! And I am in no way a Chicago White Sox fan, but he had the Cubs road game vs. Houston and the White Sox home game vs. the Texas Rangers both playing side-by-side on his HDTV. It was quite the hit! I focused on the left half, where the Cubs pounded the Astros 9-0. The White Sox lost (insert "The Simpsons" bully kid's mocking "HAH - hah!" laugh here).


Illinois

Eleven days seemed like a lot of time to spend traveling when I was leaving, but I spent all or most of seven of those days in the car. I didn't meet too many people, but those I did meet seemed very nice. And I don't feel that those days behind the wheel were wasted; I had a window seat to some prime scenery, and my hands and feet at the controls to alter my course when the mood struck to explore that scenery up close. I snapped photos of just about everything that tickled my fancy, and I shared most of them on my blog. The Xterra performed flawlessly; no flat tires, no busted hoses, no oil hemorrhages. The new stereo and new iPod functioned practically non-stop and I listened to approximately 900 songs -- in shuffle mode -- on the trip. There were very few repeats, except when I went to turn up a song somewhere between Jameson, North Dakota, and Montevideo, Minnesota, and hit a bump in the road which caused me to hit a button (which one, I know not!) on the stereo, which then reshuffled the songs and started again from #1! From that point forward I used only the remote to adjust the volume!

In rare form, I managed to remember to put everything I needed on a list, and then managed not to forget anything from the list when packing. I thought I had lost ts2bx Mrs. Farrago's lens cap -- in Minnesota, on the last day of the trip, no less -- but I even found that!

So, in all, it was a wonderful trip.

I returned home to my apartment, unpacked my suitcase, and then I... uh ...packed my suitcase for the work trip I was to leave for on Monday. Greetings from Spartanburg, South Carolina!



Most people take pictures of their babies in front of interesting back-
grounds.... Here's my baby at The Badlands, South Dakota!



*I've never really wanted to learn how to knit, or make a sweater.