Podunk

Podunk: A small isolated town, region, or place that is regarded as unimportant.

Other than the connotation of "unimportant", that pretty much describes where we are spending the week.

We left at 5:30 a.m. on Friday morning, with the goal of reaching Kansas City, MO to meet Dwight and Belkis for dinner. The temperature gauge in the van read 63 degrees as we pulled away, but would reach a high of 68 by the time we reached Dallas. We made a pit stop there for some Starbucks. Henry had fallen back asleep after our departure and was now awake.

Soon, we reached the Oklahoma welcome center. This is a new state for Henry, so we stopped and snapped this picture:

We had determined that we would try to push through as much as possible, so we had packed a nice little booty of snacks to munch on for lunch. After a tasty lunch/snack of cheese, sausage, crackers and apples, Henry took an afternoon snooze:

We arrived in KC right on time and pulled into the parking lot just as Dwight and Belkis were walking in. They were walking hand in hand and giggling to themselves...the perfect picture of newlyweds (remember the posts from just a few months ago when we attended their wedding). Here is a picture I snapped of them after we enjoyed a lovely dinner at a local Mexican restaurant:

The next morning, we got going at 6:45 a.m. after enjoying a little breakfast at the hotel. We anticipated that the weather wasn't going to be as amicable as it had been on Friday, and it's a good thing.

Here is a picture I took with my phone as we drove down I-29 through either Northern Iowa or at some point in South Dakota. I don't really recall exactly when it was, but it looked pretty much the same all day long. It was not snowing on us, the but the wind was blowing hard and the snow drifted across the road, sometimes reducing the visibility to almost nothing.

Henry's favorite past time during the trip was to watch the thermometer display. He kept a very watchful eye on it and made regular announcements of changes. We watched it fall from the 68 degree high we had in Dallas down to -14 as we arrived at our final destination. Talk about culture shock!

We finally arrived around 8:30 p.m. (after stopping for dinner) and we were all very relieved to have arrived safe and sound. We were also extremely grateful that Uncle Donny had come to the house earlier in the day and turned on the heat and plowed/shoveled the driveway and walkways.

Now, all that was left was to wait for the cousins to arrive. They were on their own adventure driving for the Chicago area under blizzard conditions. Happily, they arrived about 90 minutes later, also safe and sound and grateful for the warm refuge awaiting them.