danOrama: On (to) Wisconsin

Friday, August 4 -
Wifey packed the Explorer with all our stuff (including a cooler that plugged into the lighter and was full of 10-dozen farm fresh eggs to give to friends and relatives) and picked me up outside my office about 5:30pm. We hit the road and got rained on north of Winston-Salem near Pilot Mountain (which is quite a unique sight, if you've never seen it). We barely dodged what looked like a very nasty storm as we headed into Virginia.

Shortly after crossing into West Virginia on I-77 we came to a virtual halt -- travelling four miles in about 45 minutes. We got sick of that and decided to strike out over the back roads to bypass whatever trouble was ahead of us. State Road 20 looked like our only hope. We ended up on a twisty-turney mountain road for an hour, which would have been okay except that it was dark out and we couldn't see a thing. Eventually, we rejoined I-77 and cruised on to Charleston (which, at night, with the lights and the gas flames venting from the industrial plants, looked like something from "Blade Runner").

Wifey still felt like pushing on, and so she did until we pulled up for the night in Morehead, Kentucky at 3 a.m.

Saturday, August 5 -
We got up and were on the road again by 9. We enjoyed the scenery of the Kentucky countryside, and I also buried my nose in Heinlein's "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls." We crossed into Ohio, drove through Indiana (and didn't get caught up in any race traffic while passing around Indianapolis, which surprised me) and up through Illinois. We saw a lot of corn. The Wife enjoyed the many barns & silos, which we don't often see in the same numbers (or style).

Just before leaving Illinois for Wisconsin, we got rained on again. Outside of Janesville, the Wisconsin-bound traffic was jammed. We sat, unmoving, with the trucks and the cars (and the Harleys on their way to Sturgis, South Dakota for the rally there) for quite a while. We pondered taking the backroads again, remembering our previous attempt to do so. We decided that whatever happened on the backroads would be way more interesting than just sitting motionless on the interstate.

We exited onto State Road 351 and headed into Janesville. As we approached the outskirts, we noticed people tugging large fallen tree branches across their yards. "Looks like they had a pretty bad storm," we said. That was a bit of an understatement, as it turned out. Power lines and trees had fallen; streets were closed and stoplights were out. We had to take many detours and do a lot of backtracking through some neighborhoods that had been hammered by the storm before we finally managed to get back onto I-39/90. That'll teach us to take any backroad "shortcuts," I suppose.

Near the Wisconsin Dells we stopped for dinner -- Wifey wouldn't tell me what she wanted to eat, and so I said to hell with it, and after touring the main drag and looking at the options, I pulled into a new "diner-style" Denny's. The joint was jammed, however (height of the tourist season, and a weekend no less) and I turned around as soon as I got inside. Unbeknownst to me, The Wife was thinking "bathroom!" and got a little upset about my sudden change of mind.

Anyway, after an exquisite dining experience at the BK next door, we continued on towards Minneapolis, both of us only a little less grumpy than we were before. We called my Sister and let her know that we were probably an hour or so away from her place and wanted to make sure she'd still be awake when we got there. Wifey finally succumbed to the weariness of driving and slept in the passenger seat for a while. We arrived at Karen's abode a little before 11 p.m. Of course, we chatted for a couple hours before going to bed.

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