Sophie helps with the trip plan in our motel in Springfield, Illinois.We’re home. Actually the dogs and I are home. Brian flew out early yesterday morning for a meeting in San Jose. But we made it back, all of us. And we’re now legally and officially husband and husband.
We decided to speed through the last three days of our trip. Friday it was !-70 from Cisco, Utah through Colorado, into Kansas, sleeping in Goodland 588 miles in less than 9 hours. That included a scenic drive from Moab on 128, a snow storm on Loveland Pass, and rush hour in Denver.
Saturday, still on I-70, we crossed Kansas went through Kansas City, into Missouri and finally St. Louis. We got onto I-55 and made it into Springfield, IL. 792 miles in under 12 hours. That included a hour and a half side trip to Lucas, Kansas for a tour of the Cabin Home and Garden of Eden of outsider artist S. P. Dinsmoor, and a meal stop at the Woodyard Bar-B-Que in Kansas City. Robin Sirna, the wonderful woman who doted on us at Woodyard, asked us where we were heading. We said Springfield, she said, “That’s right in the path of the storm.” Before we got far out of Kansas City, the rain started. Hard driving rain, hurricane rain. We persevered made it to Springfield, soggy but safe, at 10:30. We had left over BBQ for dinner, all was good. We had less than 400 miles to go.
We left the motel in Springfield Sunday morning before 8. It was still raining but we were pumped for the last sprint. We pilgrimaged, on Route 66 again, to the Old State Capitol to see where Obama stood. We got on and off 55 to follow a few remaining stands of 66 in Illinois. We even saw the Hot Dog Giant in Atlanta, IL., all by 9:30 in the morning. (Lucy was unnerved by the giant’s size and barked loud enough to disturb the locals, all of who where either in church or the bar that was already opened.) We made it to Joliet at noon and joined I-80 for the final swoop home. A few minutes later, traffic stopped.
We sat . . . no cops, no signs, no alerts from the Chicago Tribune. (Though I did get two alerts about the White Sox games). We waited. The rain had stopped but so had we. Over the next 4-1/2 hours we crept 3 miles. Brian was able to find out, on the beloved iPhone, that I-80/I-94 was closed because of flooding and that traffic was being detoured, somewhere up ahead. Finally, we started moving a little faster and stopping dead less frequently. We slowly crossed the Indiana border, with the time change it was now 5:21 PM.
When we reached the one lane exit, it was 4 lanes of mayhem. Most people waited their turn. But some felt they were allowed to drive to the head of the line and then signal to be let in. This is why hand guns are not allowed in my car. There was no one directing merging traffic. Finally we saw one cop car from the town of Hammond, IN stationed at the ramp.
The officer was alone and as each car or truck drove by it stopped and he gave them directions. He gave us directions, his voice was already hoarse. I hate to think how long he was going to stand there to deal with the 6 hour pile up on I-80 through Chicago. I wondered where everybody else was. It scared me to think of how we would handle an actual disaster.
After an hour de tour of Hammond, we got on I-90, sped back down to I-80 and speedily made it through Indiana, into Ohio, the final 12.6 miles of Michigan and home. The dogs were ecstatic. It was sometime after 10 PM. 425 miles in 13 hours. Brian had a 6:30 AM flight and a meeting to finalize, but first he unpacked the car while I fed the dogs and opened some windows.
Did I mention we left the refrigerator door ajar for 16 days?
- - - David
And now for the bad news. I will be blogging about the trip out to California on Route 66, the nuptials at the Coral Sands, and everything we did, saw and ate on the way home.
That should take up all your discretional reading time for quite awhile.
So you’ll just have to put away that novel and ignore the elections.
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