The Road Trip From…. South Carolina

You know how sometimes things go so wrong, that you kind of want to cry, but you know that if you wait long enough, you’ll be laughing about it instead? Now you know why it took me so long to blog about our road trip to Gillette, Wyoming. Just kidding…. I’m not laughing yet. But I’m sure it won’t be long. Our fun little week long road trip to our new home in Wyoming turned into a 4 day, race against time, kind of a trip with several speed bumps along the way. The original plan was to take our time, stop in Tennessee for a day, make it to the Badlands and hang out for another day or two, and eventually arrive in Gillette by early Sunday, April 8th. But, due to some demands from the agency providing Erich’s contract, we ended up needing to get there by Friday. We took off Monday morning and made it all the way to Georgia before our radiator hose busted. Thanks to some duct tape and a little handy work from my own personal mechanic turned nurse, we made it 6 miles to an auto parts store where we turned on the generator and let the kids play in the camper while Erich replaced the busted hose. We hit the road again and finally made it to Tennessee, where we spent the night parked beside our friends’ house on a very beautiful piece of land surrounded by rolling hills. We spent the day hanging out with our good friends and then headed to Nashville where we met a mega wind/thunderstorm. We stopped for dinner with another good friend and ended up camping out in a Publix parking lot until the storm blew over, I swear the lightening was gunning for us. Somewhere in Missouri our camper acquired a flat tire. It was frigid cold outside so we turned on the propane heater and tried to warm up while Erich replaced the flat using a jack that wasn’t quite adequate. Good thing he is also superman. We hit the road again and thanks to Siri (who we are still not on speaking terms with), we ended up at the end of a gravel road, stuck in the middle of a very soft dirt field in South Dakota. A local tow truck driver made our day (and an easy $150) and pulled us out of the muck. We parked at a truck stop and crashed for a few hours only to realize there was a snow storm headed our way and we needed to get to Gillette by Thursday night to set up camp before the storm hit. No rest for the weary! We made it to Rapid City, where we picked up our other car and our long-term storage trailer, before it started to snow. We were able to make it to Gillette and set up camp, in the windy, snowing, freezing cold, before dark. Our “full hook up site” ended up not being so…. full hookup, but that’s a story for another day. We have spent the last couple days relaxing and getting acquainted with our new town. We even went exploring out at the Devil’s Tower National Park where we were surrounded by deer, antelope and a field full of comical prairie dogs. We have so much to be thankful for… I keep thinking about how things could have been so much worse: our hose could have busted in the middle of nowhere, our flat tire could have happened on the interstate, and I don’t even want to think about the muddy field. Through it all though, our kids were such troopers and handled every speed bump like champs. I am so proud of them. The moral of this story: Father is faithful, Wyoming is cold, and life is good even when it’s not. =)