Today’s drive consisted of zipping along through Kansas, Iowa and finally to Minnesota. We know that the majority of Patti’s close family members will be gathering tonight and tomorrow to celebrate our nephew Matt’s wedding to Sofie.
So mostly, we just watched the miles go by and enjoyed the changes of scenery. When Patti is just too tired, we have a good set up. She can crawl in the back and curl up and actually stretch out for some decent sleeping. Dick does more of the driving, but we have a deal that whenever he is getting too tired, Patti takes over. He prefers to just kick the seat back and sleep for a little bit.
The whole day was racing towards being in Rochester, Minnesota at Mr. Pizza for a 5:30 family gathering. It is amazing how well GPS does with estimating how long it’s going to take to drive so far. Our theory of keeping the speed down around 70 miles per hour has been paying off. Our miles per gallon is just shy of 40 miles per gallon, which is terrific.
As we were driving the 500 miles north from Kansas, both of relished being back in green. We have been in mostly brown in California for nearly 30 years but have a deep connection with the green of our earlier years. In Missouri and Iowa, we drove through a couple of bad stretches where it either was storming and raining hard or quite a storm had gone through earlier. In Iowa, we stopped at a roadside rest where there were huge branches were down and talked with one of the workers there who was starting to clean up. She said a big storm had gone through just an hour earlier. In the local communities, there had been some buildings that had been taken out, with estimated straight line winds of 80 miles an hour. We saw lots of standing water from the deluge of rain. As we drove around Des Moines, we drove slowly for nearly an hour through a very heavy storm. Further north in Iowa Patti took over driving for a while and was relieved for it to be a sunny afternoon.
And at last we were in Minnesota and stopped to unload our car at Patti’s Mom, Joan’s house . We then drove to meet the family at Mr. Pizza. So nice to see the folks who were already in Rochester. We know more people are flying in or driving in on Friday or late Thursday night. It’s such a blessing when family can gather together. There was lots of chatting and catching up of what everyone is doing and tons of fun photos. That really captures the fun. We made it and we’re ready for a fun celebration.
After getting back to Patti’s mom’s, we went on a lovely walk over at the park with the dog. Nice being out in the green green wooded area. We miss Green in California. What a lovely walk.
Both of us went to bed at 9:30. Driving 2000 miles in four days had caught up with us, but we had now arrived.
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