And we're back...

I think that driving to Illinois this last time was the cure for driving to Illinois ever again.

In other words, we're flying the next time.

Our trip back wasn't bad, but the trip up...my oh my.

We left on Friday night, which was planned, but what wasn't planned was that it would take us damn near 20 hours to get to mom and dad's.

This is usually a 17 hour drive. I've made it in 15 1/2 hours before.

Not 20.

We left around 6:30 and we expected to hit traffic in Austin. That was around 8 PM. Then at 10, we came to a standstill outside of Hillsboro (not even to Dallas yet) and traveled at anywhere between 10-30 mph for the next 10 miles because there was construction. But there wasn't any construction actually going on...just reconfigured lanes which evidently confused EVERYONE who was driving north.

Around midnight, we had finally made it through Dallas, and were traveling at a pretty good clip. Then, suddenly, everything stopped. I was trying to see what was going on, but it wasn't until we had sat for almost 45 minutes that we saw all 5 lanes of the expressway were being forced off onto the access road.

After we got past that (now 6+ hours into our trip) we headed up the road some more trying desperately to get out of Texas. Then at 1 AM, the road was closed again, this time in Sherman, Texas, just south of the Texas-Oklahoma border. This one was really big because they even had the access road closed...an air life helicopter was sitting on it. So we had to traverse through Sherman to get back on the expressway.

We finally made it out of Texas 7 hours into our trip. This portion of the drive usually only takes 6 hours max.

And so went the rest of our trip. Between having to stop in BF Misery (or Missouri) to sleep so I didn't run off the road, and having to rescue a runaway truck that some kid forgot to put in gear, WHILE keeping Sparky's leash in my hand, it was one hell of an adventure.

But we made it there, and we made it back. Grandma Connie and Grandpa Rick enjoyed having their granddaughter around, and Sparky enjoyed playing with Rhett.

We had a great week, and enjoyed visiting with the folks we saw and I'm sorry that we didn't get to see everyone, but when you're traveling with a 9 month old, everything is on a tight schedule. We had a limited amount of time at each of our destinations, and the only days we didn't travel somewhere were Monday and Thursday. Every other day we were on the road for at least 4 hours. I think our next trip is going to be just to Bloomington.

And have I mentioned that we're flying?