August 11, 2024
Travel day from California, Missouri to Grand Island, Nebraska.
Got up kind of early because we had to leave by 9AM, since we had a dinner date at 530PM in Grand Island. Packed the car with MUCH help from the dogs. Kidding aside, the dogs WERE helpful with getting rid of leftovers we never got a chance to eat. We actually pulled back onto the dusty dirt road at 859AM! Passed many Amish carts going the other way going to Sunday service. I did not take any pictures as I do try and be respectful, but an Amish family travelling in a cart all dressed up for Sunday is really something everyone should see.
The drive was quite good, albiet a bit boring. But I suppose that boring is not a bad thing when driving long distances. We had a short stint on the interstate before we headed north on a non-interstate road in order to avoid Kansas City. Prior to turning north, at 10AM, we stopped at “The Cheese Shop”, which was advertised on a few billboards along the way. About a week before we started this trip we found a store near our house on a driveabout (like a walkabout, but with a car) called The Cheese Store, and it is a wonderful store, with cheese, snacks, baking goods, organic/gluten free/vegan baking ingredients, huckleberry salt water taffy, jams, jellies, pickles, hot sauces, … well you get the idea, The name of the store off the highway intrigued me (and the fact it was only one mile off the interstate).
We exited the highway, drove the one mile south, pulled into the empty parking lot over to the front door (as I was remembering it was Sunday), and read on the door that they opened at noon. I wasn’t really too upset as it was Suinday and I only went two miles out of the way. Pulled around to turn left up the road back to the highway and as I turned I noticed a lady waving at us to come back into the lot. Pulled out the one entrance and pulled into the other, drove back near the front door, parked, and went in (since the OPEN sign was now lit up).
It turned out that the lady regularly comes in early to catch up on paperwork on Sundays (kind of like I am catching up on this blog … sorry to be so derelict in my writing … I will do better [read tomorrow’s entry to find out {in part} why this is so]).
Not to interrupt, but I cannot remember ever writing a sentence containing all three versions of the paragragh/bracket punctuations. It is probable that it is not correctly written/punctuated, but still…
So, where was I… Ah, we shopped for just a few minutes and purchased a few things in the shop then got back on the road, only “losing” 20 minutes towards our goal of making it to dinner. I could see that it was rewarding for the shop to open early on Sunday, there were several other travellers in there when we left.
We managed to avoid Kansas City traffic and headed up towards I80. We did have one issue on a limited access connector road/highway. Apparently this connector was a recent addition to the road system and Miss GPS was not very knowledgeable about where the exits actually went. We flew by the exit we were supposed to get off on. Soon after we passed the exit, Miss GPS uttered the word we always love to hear: RECALCULATING … Notice that Miss GPS did not apologize for not telling up to get off at the exit.
The recalculating included offering up the exact same phase for multiple exits, leading us to understand that Miss GPS was lost and we were on our own and we were lost in Missouri/Iowa. It dawned on us that we had to actually navigate on our own in order to continue our trip to dinner in Nebraska. The Horrors! After debating whether to call AAA, we made the decision that we were up to the challenge and would figure it out (gasp) on our own.
We got off an exit and got back on heading south. Ignoring everything Miss GPS told us to do, which was difficult, because we didn’t want to insult her and cause her to be vengeful when we got in the vicinity of wildfires later on our trip. We managed to get back on track and find our way to Grand Island by 430PM, leaving us an hour to get the stuff out of the car and drive to dinner, where a grand time was had by all.
A “grand” time in “Grand Island” … get it? … oh, never mind … .. . HEH!
Thanks for reading.
Kevin
PS: Your computer/phone/tablet is not broken, there aren’t any pictures… 😉