2016 Minnesota Vacation - Day 3

The day started out pretty normal. Woke up early to let the dog out, then went back to bed. It was in the 60's as the sun was rising, which was a nice surprise. We ended up leaving Osceola, Iowa at 10:20am and headed north. Another beautiful day as we went about 45 miles into Des Moines and started looking for fuel and food, but once again we hit some roadwork causing a bit of a backup. It seems we're hitting a lot of that this trip, and then I remember why. In this area of the country they have a limited window of opportunity to do things like road repairs and other outdoor stuff because you can't very well do those repairs with extremely cold weather and large amounts of snow and ice on the roads. In Texas, they do roadwork, and just about everything else, year-round.

We pulled off and filled up the car. What's very strange and hard to get used to in Iowa is their pricing of gasoline. In Texas we have regular, unleaded plus, and premium. The higher the grade, the more it costs, right? Not here. The cheapest fuel is super unleaded with the same amount of ethanol as we get in Texas (10%). Next highest is the regular unleaded, and the most expensive is just gasoline with no ethanol at all. This is big corn country and ethanol is king. Even the pumps are hard to figure out because they have 5 different grades and 3 hoses. I paid $2.25 for premium. Nice!

We found some lunch next door and again proceeded north. Today we traveled 308 miles and got to Lawrence's brother's house a little after 3:30pm. We unloaded the car, did some visiting, and I decided to take a nap. I drove a total of 1,273 miles over three days, and it can be exhausting. I have a friend Greg who drives an 18 wheeler all over the country, and it's not unusual for him to do somewhere in the area of 600 miles every day. Respect.

I got up from my nap and quickly noticed that it was getting dark outside. A storm was brewing and it was heading right for us! There were all sorts of warnings up for our area, and the radar showed a big blob of red and purple close by, and it was moving fast. 70 mph winds and blinding heavy rain put on a heck of a show. We were supposed to be heading out for dinner, but we decided to wait for the storm to pass. It did pass, but then it curled back around for another swing at us. After it had mostly died down, we eventually headed out. There was lots of debris on the roads, and we saw a patch of trees that were snapped in half. I'm talking tornado-snapped in half! I can believe it after those high winds.

We took two cars because we had a lot of people. On the way, the front car went over debris and started to lose air in one tire. We all got to the restaurant just in time and decided to change the tire after dinner. We went outside and it was still raining (and about 67 degrees) and decided we would leave the car overnight and fix it tomorrow, so we all piled into the CRV and headed back to the house. One of the kids rode in the back hatch area. She's small-framed and had no problems.

At this point, everyone was dozing off and ready for bed. I headed downstairs to the basement (where we sleep) and started to write my daily entry. A big bolt of lightning and BOOM - all the power is off. I'm sitting here in the dark, on the couch, with nothing but the glow of my iPad lighting my corner of the room. I'll use that same glow to make my way to bed in a moment.

No definite plans for tomorrow. We'll probably just do some visiting with various people around town and goof off. To me, that's perfect, and what vacations are for.

I may or may not write additional entries throughout our two week stay. It all depends on what we do, and if it's worth telling. I wouldn't want to bore you with what we eat every day and where we went shopping, which may be all we do. I'll definitely write again on the trip home.

Hey! The lights just came back on! Good night......