Day 6: Road-trip ✅, Iowa homecoming starts now!

The blue line is our approximate path for the last 6 days + a little detour for Mt Rushmore. We did 4-5 1/2 hours per day of driving with 1-2 playground stops each day. Magnificent drive!

We safely made it to Des Moines, Iowa. Ending our 6-day road trip with a four hour stretch from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

If you haven’t seen afternoon storms in this part of the world they are something to behold. Both scary as you know there could be a twister 🌪 and/or flooding that puts everyone at risk contrasted with clouds that are seemingly endless, fill the entire sky in every direction and feel like they may literally swallow you and everything like I imagine a black hole would do it in outer space.

As we headed south there was a major storm tracking to cross Interstate 29 as we headed south. We tracked its progress via weather radar and we could see the dark bank of menacing clouds and lightning. Fortunately we got away with only some heavy rain but the storm and lightning ⛈ stalled off to the west for long enough for us to make it to Interstate 80 and then we outran it as we did the final 2-hour going east on Interstate 80.

I spent 10 years in the cities of Columbus and Atlanta in Georgia and these storms were a constant there too. Seattle though is temperate so this is a whole new experience for Scarlett and Nora. A mixture of being curious, scared and not wanting it to rain so they couldn’t play outside.

Whitney’s parents sold their home of 35+ years earlier this year and moved into an apartment. So for the first time we are not in Whitney’s childhood home. It is certainly different, but it totally and instantly feels the same to be back here. It proves, yet again, it is the people you come to enjoy and the rest of it isn’t that significant.

Whitney and I did a grocery shop run after clearing out the luggage. And we did NOT beat the storm. As we tried to make the 100 yards from the Hyvee grocery store to our car the rain unleashed. In Seattle you can often stand in the rain for a long time and not really notice it, you might be damp. Here, within 30 seconds of the run with grocery cart and then what was probably 2 minutes to heave the food into the car and return the cart (but felt like an eternity) I was drenched to the bone. It was funny, brought back memories and gave Whitney a good laugh.

So, we are starting our Iowa stay tonight. Tired from 5 nights in hotels but excited that the road trip went well and we are all feeling good about this beginning.

Even the “all-day” tantrums of day 2 have faded into a more accurate proportion of that day. I was even able to laugh today during an epic 5-min meltdown outside of Subway where we had eaten. I had Hazel in one arm and was mostly unsuccessfully restraining Nora who was trying to renter the shop where Whitney and Scarlett were trying to go to the bathroom but Nora had been ejected to my care a few minutes earlier as she wasn’t supporting that activity! In doing so Nora was screaming and wrestling with me, lots of laughs and smiles from the wall of people in Subway and even two police officers 👮‍♀️ coming to get lunch for themselves wondered if they should explore the circumstances further. Thankfully they didn’t as I am not sure my explanation was going to hold much water! Anyway, we resumed the trip and all was forgotten a few minutes later, at least for Nora!

The view from our apartment west of Des Moines, Iowa. Magnificent sky! This is after the big storm had passed through.