Thanksgiving travels

We traveled to Iowa to spend Thanksgiving this year with members of Jen's family. It was a fun, quick trip with the minimum of travel adventures compacted on the first hours of the journey.

We set off for the 5 1/2 hour journey after 7:00 PM, Wednesday night, having learned that traveling while the girls sleep seems to work best. We had taken a detailed look at the weather and evaluated that the waning snow activity in Iowa did not pose a threat.

Little did we know that there'd be freezing ice on the interstate in Minnesota and that the continuously professional state Department of Transportation wasn't exactly on top of things on the busiest travel day of the year. Finally around 10 PM, they began to salt the roads, an activity reportedly underway across the border for the previous six hours. Of course, by that time we had been sitting in still traffic and had lost a few hours of travel time. Once the salt trucks came through, the road immediately improved and we began to move.

It was during this standing-still period we hear the following from the backseat, where Meredith had been resisting going to sleep:

Meredith: Daddy, I peed in my diaper.
Me: [wearily] You're not wearing a diaper.

Meredith is typically very good about informing us of her bathroom needs well in advance. But the extreme tiredness from school, packing for the trip, playing with friends all evening, and excitement of the trip had its effect. We stopped at a gas station 10 minutes later and Jen ran the girl through the icy wind to get her cleaned up.

An aside: At one point of our journey Meredith informs us of a McDonalds that "That's where chicken McNuggets live." A couple days later she explains how a fisherman catches a salmon and makes it dead, gives it to the grocery store, we buy it, and then we make it "deader" when we cook it. Meredith also asked if we were there yet at the rate of about 20 times an hour. As annoying as that question is, it is pretty frustrating when asked while in stand-still traffic just 30 miles into your cross-state journey. It's also a great question when you take a wrong turn and are lost in rural Iowa after less than 4 hours of sleep.

When we hit Iowa, the roads were perfectly clear, despite the worse weather. I have just about as much pride as a native-born Minnesotan, but compared to our neighbors in Iowa and Wisconsin, our road conditions here are pretty consistently abysmal. Despite the clear roads across the border, we realized that we weren't going to make it all the way and checked into a hotel at 2:00 AM in Waterloo. Elaine awakes at 5:50 AM, and eventually we're back on the road. We make it in time for Thanksgiving dinner in Lost Nation and to witness a Thanksgiving Packer win over the Detroit Lions.

Meredith and Elaine basked in the attention from Grandpa Kerry and Grandma Gail, their great grandparents, also known as Oma and Papa, great aunts and uncles, Jody, Dan, Joylene, and Bill, and Uncle David and Aunt Olga. The next day featured going to Jody and Dan's and seeing their sheep and cats, and a dozen or so distant cousins of varying degrees. Lots of food and fun.

We drove back at night and arrived in Minneapolis at 1:30 AM. The next day involved lots of sleep.