Another Whirlwind Trip

I decided to go on this trip with my daughter somewhat at the last minute. Usually, I plan things out well in advance. This time I thought about it and pretty much just decided to go. So after posting pictures for my challenges, I packed up and left. The first day, we left about 10am. We ate lunch at Steak and Shake in Mc Alester, Oklahoma and continued to follow the same road through Muscogee and on to Missouri. We picked up a precious eight week old Cane Corso puppy who was really scared. She shook a whole lot but actually was very good.

The next morning we got up early. We drove through St. Louis and took pictures of the Arch through our bug-studded windshield. We crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois, and immediately the traffic seemed to ease up. One thing that I noticed is that there are lots of semis with Canadian license plates on the road up here. Later that day we drove through Indiana, where the time zone changed, and into Ohio. It was getting late so we stopped for the night.

Tuesday morning, we drove to a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. As you drive into the city, there are numerous oil storage tanks and refineries. We got a glimpse of the “Bridge to Canada.” Unfortunately, I don’t have a passport or card; so we couldn’t cross over into Canada. I have actually been there before, when I was a child. My daughter and granddaughter have never been there yet. We continued our drive passing through Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids. We crossed back into Indiana and found a nice spot to pull over to see Lake Michigan. Then we went into Illinois and Iowa . As we are driving I start taking pictures of this gorgeous sunset. As beautiful as it was, I had a strange feeling that this was not a good thing. My daughter’s map app locked up, and we missed our exit to deliver this cute little Cocker Spaniel, who had been so nervous that he got car sick. We noticed our mistake as we passed the exit. So we took the next exit, which took us down several dirt roads with deer all along the sides of the roads. It was dark by now, and we were getting very concerned about the weather. We dropped off the puppy and began looking for a safe place, because there was a tornado warning, and they were expecting dollar-sized hail. The first place we came to was a small gas station. We parked under the awning and the gentleman inside came running out. He told us if we wanted to protect the car from the hail, we should park on the other side of the pumps because of the direction the storm was coming from. So we moved the car and went inside. He proceeded to tell us that the station wasn’t a very safe place because of all the windows, and that we really hadn’t picked a very good place if there was a tornado. So we asked where the nearest town was. It was seven miles away. Since nothing was going on yet, we drove there and found a Walmart. At least it wouldn’t have many windows. At first there were very few people in the store. But as the minutes ticked by, people started trickling in to seek refuge from the storm. Several drivers of fully loaded cattle trucks came in and said the wind was shaking their trucks so badly that they had to get off the road. We stayed there about an hour until there was a break in the weather. We drove across the street to a motel where we got the very last room. Someone came in after us and said that there was flooding down the road, and they couldn’t get to the only other motel in town. Unfortunately, they didn’t get a room.