Price of gas: $3.85
Stillwater, MN to Mitchell, SD
REI stores visited: 6 (Maple Grove)
Late to bed and early to rise. I didn’t fall asleep until after 2, and I’m up at 7 a.m. Ooch, and a long, boring day of driving ahead. Great.
We trade photos this morning and I try to get Uncle John & Aunt Kathy up and running on photo sharing services like Snapfish. It’s mostly successful, I think. Everything I had with me is hidden, but one item remains: the coveted white with purple trim crocheted easter basket, complete with fake purple-and-white flowers. Janie and Bernie were both jealous when I said, nope, this is for Kathy. The problem is that it’s bulky. Hard to get out of the car unobtrusively. I go to collect my bike from the side of the house, see no one is in the kitchen, and drop it (wrapped in a garbage bag) into a 5-gallon bucket outside. Excellent.
Missions accomplished, I’m now devoted to not getting stuff dumped on me. However, in the spirit of sportsmanship, I’ve left my car unlocked at this point. I gather up all my cooler food: Wisconsin cheese, homemade pickles, Christmas pickles (relish), Kathy’s raspberry jam… certainly this was never intended to be a shopping trip of any kind, but I’ve done well on the homemade food front. All packed up, take a couple photos, head out.
Five minutes down the road I call and say, “You should look outside in the bucket.” Kathy calls back saying not only did she always want such an easter basket, but she’s going to get new living room furniture to match so she can put it on the coffee table. I sense sarcasm.
An hour later, as I’m getting ready to dig into my leftover food from last night, I flip open the container, and lo and behold… well, it’s not the rock. It’s this weird clock Kathy won. Hard to describe, really. But imagine four clear plastic quadrants around a small digital face. In each of the quadrants is a different color liquid. Presumably the clock should turn and the liquids drip into each other’s quadrants, making pretty patterns… but the clock doesn’t work, and the face doesn’t turn. I laugh. Ah well.
An hour plus south to I-90, and then I’m on the road that could take me all the way back to Seattle. I’ve got some stops on the way and won’t actually come in that way, but I could! Now it feels real, that this trip is almost over and I’m going home. Waaah!
I’ve done this drive once before. In 1988, after Grandpa died, mom and I stayed on and then drove Grandpa’s station wagon back to Washington. I was 16 and mom had a bad back and I drove like a maniac through most of South Dakota and Montana. Now I’m 36 and doing it by myself and the drive is still incredibly boring, though I hope I don’t completely drive like a maniac.
Minnesota, near Iowa.
South Dakota
Today feels like it started late and is going later… I manage 400 miles but give up at Mitchell, SD. The goal was around the Badlands, but that’s another 200+ miles and I don’t have another 3 hours of driving in me. It got better once I started listening to books on tape. I have Ted Sorensen’s book about being an advisor to John F. Kennedy. It’s a meandering tale and not a book for serious academics, but some interesting reminiscences. Books on tape can make the miles fly by… good thing I have another 16 hours with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment