The past few days didn't fly by fast enough. Do you ever feel like you are trapped in a never ending drama? For the love, we took the worlds longest car ride in the worst conditions. Let me back up. On Tuesday Neal, his older brother, and dad, worked ALL day in his parent's new garage to put up shelves and a long work table along one wall. Throughout the day I kept hearing reports that bad weather was headed for the south on Thursday. We had planned to leave out of Thursday. =( I kept Neal updated throughout the day. What I didn't know was the storm was sweeping the nation and Minnesota would be getting really bad too. Neal hated to leave a day early so convincing him it was going to be bad wasn't easy. I spent Tuesday washing our clothes and packing everything up. Sometime in the evening I read about everything freezing on the east coast. By that point Neal was on board. My compromise in leaving a day early was not pushing to be out by 5am like we normally would do. Bad move! We woke up and it was snowing; the storm had already hit. Neal finished loading the truck, we had breakfast, then at 10am we headed out. We kept hoping we would drive out of the snow, but it just wasn't happening.
We stopped in Sioux Falls, SD so Neal could spend the rest of his gift cards at a store that is only in the north. The weather was terrible. I kept telling Neal we could have been living in the middle of that nightmare. You see, before he joined the Air Force he had a line number with the Sioux Falls PD. He was somewhere in the top 25 when he had to pass up the first hire date because of a prior commitment. He was then in the top 15. When they pushed their next hire date from January to July he enlisted in the USAF. Thank God we aren't living in the middle of snow hell. I used to think snow was lovely, but not after this Christmas trip. I have ZERO desire to EVER live around in. It's a dangerous burden. If you don't believe me then just reflect back to the post labeled
Christmas Road Trip. People like to say if you drive carefully you will be fine... not always the case.
After we hit the roads again the weather didn't get better. After a while I started asking Neal how he felt and if he wanted to stop. I told him I would rather us pay for a hotel then end up in the ditch. When we started seeing the bottoms of several cars, I really started asking if he felt we could go on. Our goal was to get out of Iowa. During the storm over Christmas Iowa was the nightmare we had to wait two days to drive through. The main chunk of road we needed to drive on was closed. Suddenly I spotted a sign for
Offutt AFB (Air Force Base). I asked Neal if he wanted to stop there and get a room. I knew we could stay cheaper on base. He quickly agreed. It was only six miles to the base, but honestly it felt much farther. The roads were all covered in snow and ice making it a
fun drive. Once on base it seemed to take forever to get to the billeting office. The whole time I kept thinking how we could get stationed there and was making a mental note to make sure
Offutt AFB isn't on Neal's
dream sheet.To give you the short version we came down with the storm then it overtook us. We ended up spending two nights at
Offutt AFB before the roads were clear enough for us to head south again. If we had stayed in MN until Thursday we most likely wouldn't have been able to leave out until Yesterday.
After spending the night at my parents house we returned the rental truck and did some car shopping. I hate how some car salesmen can be. It was terrible. I was ready to give up. I wasn't sure just what Neal wanted anyway. On our second to the last stop a Chevy Tahoe had Neal completely smitten. By all
accounts it was just what he was looking for. The only problem was when the salesman went to get the keys for a test drive he learned it had just been sold. =( This was the first one he really liked so that was a bit frustrating. We ended up going to the dealership
next door and buying one like it for $1,000 less. I don't think they had the same bells and whistles, but the important things like four wheel drive it did have. We
immediately drove it back to my parents house, loaded it up, and drove home. It's good to be home even if it is a disaster. Next year I want a maid for Christmas.