Traveling South (January 19 - 20)

So we headed out of Red Lake Monday morning. Kendall worked the night shift, so we left as soon as we could after he got home. The roads weren’t great, so we didn’t make the best time. I drove much of the day while Kendall attempted to sleep. I just asked Kendall for any notable memories of our first day of travelling. Here is how he summed it up: “The boys did really well. The roads were really bad. I slept a lot. I was grouchier than a badger. That was really unusual.” Actually, he didn’t even remember his grouchiness until the other day when I was going through a grouchy phase and, in my own defense, I reminded him of his own sins.

Monday night we finally made it to our goal: a little motel just north of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The motel we stayed at was a little, old drive-up motel. We felt that for that night, low price was more important than high quality. I had called ahead and been quoted $45. We got there and Kendall checked out a room before making any monetary commitments. The owner told Kendall he would take $40 if we could pay cash. Kendall said he didn’t have that much in U.S. dollars, would he take Canadian dollars? The owner agreed- so we got that room for about $32 U.S. J That suited our budget just fine.

The room was clean, but old. I loved the old tile bathroom. It reminded me of how luxurious it felt to get a shower like that in some of the places I stayed in Ecuador and Costa Rica. The motel didn’t have long distance phone service. Being old-fashioned (and strapped for cash) as we are, we don’t have the modern convenience of a cell phone. So in order to call my parents and tell them where we were, I had to use the owner’s cell phone. In the morning, the owners provided muffins for our family before we left. It was a cute place and we’d use it again.

Tuesday we supposedly had only 7 hours left to get to Goshen. Well, it turned out to be much longer than that. We were so happy with how the boys were travelling. And Kendall and I were getting along great too. But that all took a nosedive in Hammond, Indiana. I won’t go into the details, but the nosedive had something to do with getting lost and Cabela’s.

We finally crawled into my parents’ house at 8:30 or so. It was good to be there. And to not be in the car.