Well, that was a later arrival than planned

At least this night's late arrival wasn't due to any vehicular malfunctions. The wind that followed us from Arizona, blowing dust all the way stayed with us, except for a change of pace the dust changed to snow. The first flakes were falling as we were leaving the hotel this morning and continued for nearly the entire trip. The worst was through Nebraska on I-80 when the combination of wind and snow caused nearly white out conditions through much of our time in the state. We could always see a few hundred feet in front of us, but it wasn't a lot of fun. J. has sore muscles from fighting the wind coming from the north which wanted to push us off the road. The only truly frightening moments were when we passed cars in ditches... there were several. The worst was when we passed the three semis which must have had some sort of accident which caused all three trucks to end up off the road. I will say that we were might impressed with the number of plows we passed on the highway. Far more plows than I ever pass in the Chicago area on much snowier days.

Now, the trouble with high winds and blowing snow is that if you plan to picnic for your lunches, the weather makes that nearly impossible. Not wanting to spend another day passing endless snacks around the van hoping it would pass for lunch, and not having any friends (real or virtual) which we could invite ourselves to visit, we felt a little stuck. We knew there was a nice welcome center just inside the Colorado border on I-76, so we thought we'd see if we could eat in there. It turns out they don't allow food inside the visitor's center, but they had a back room in which they could have food and they offered us the use of it. It was very, very nice of them. Actually, every time we've stopped at this center they have been extremely nice. In better weather the visitor center also has places to walk around and nice picnic tables. Being able to fix some sandwiches inside a building made for a much more pleasant day.

So here we are in Des Moines with just a short half day drive ahead of us tomorrow. The plan is to arrive mid-afternoon and be able to get things sorted out before life begins on Thursday. That's the plan, at least. The way the past two days have gone, I'm a little hesitant to have any expectations at all.