I'm dreaming of a boring weekend, just like the ones I used to know! The plans for this weekend seemed to be very relaxing and divine. Our plan was to head off to Gilbertville after work on Friday and spend the night with Fr. Huber. On Saturday morning, Gabby was to join us as we were going to take off for Dubuque for a Christmas concert that the Loras concert choir was performing. Along came Old Man Winter and ... foiled again. Friday we didn't know what to do, it didn't look threatening and maybe this storm that was forecasted was just going to turn out to be nothing. After much deliberation we decided to head off, stopping to visit Fr. Huber for supper and a few hours of conversation and then head to Dubuque to make sure we would be there for the concert. We made it to Gilbertville with no problem and Gabby came over to Father's and we had a delightful supper with a lot of laughs and stories as is always the case. We then set off and made it to Dubuque where we spent the night in a hotel. When we awoke, there was quite a bit of ice and slush there. They already had snow on the ground which we didn't have. We called Micah and picked him up and had brunch and visited with him for a while, taking him back to his dorm after to get ready for the concert. We went out and drove around a bit. By this time I REALLY had to use the ladies' room so, where did Mike take me? To the casino of course! They have restrooms in there you know! They also have a lot of smoke, blech! We didn't stay long as the smoke was even bothering Mike. We headed out to do a little birthday shopping for Reed and while we were shopping, Mike got the call. Micah called to say they had cancelled the concert. Micah said he totally understood that we probably wanted to get going but could we just come and say goodbye before we left. He was so disappointed but it is a little easier knowing that he will be home in just a few days.
The trip home was memorable to say the least. It was our new Caddy's first snowstorm. It was a little bit of a trick to navigate the hills of Dubuque on ice with it but we made it. The roads were messy all the way to almost Waterloo. We took the Evansdale exit to get out and stretch at McDonald's and the car was totally iced over in the front. I can't describe how many layers of ice there were on that license plate.
Once we got on the avenue of the saints, it pretty much spiraled downward. We finally got behind a semi that was going at a good clip and made it to Clear Lake in pretty good time. Highway 18 from Clear Lake to Garner was less than desirable and from Garner to Britt was darn near impossible. We got stuck on a bridge just east of Britt. Mike got out and pushed and shoveled snow from around the tires and we finally made it out. The picture shows what helped to save us, it may look like your average make up case to you, however, it makes a wonderful scoop shovel for snow when stuck.
It took me looking for the shoulder and white line and Mike looking for the center line from Garner to our house in order to keep some sort of orientation to our surroundings. Luckily I know the road from Britt to our house like the back of my hand, it's just actually seeing the road that was the trick. We forged into our garage at about 7:30 p.m. We had left Dubuque at 2:00 p.m. Both of us thought it felt more like 9 p.m.
In retrospect, we probably should have stayed in Dubuque or at the very least, Gilbertville but knowing that Reed was at home alone and just thinking about the electricity going out on him as well as having Mike worry about the livestock from hours away. Hopefully we won't be in this situation again but you can be assured we will think twice before doing anything like that again.
No comments:
Post a Comment