day one

if you didn't see the sunrise thursday morning ... you missed a nice one. i tried pretty hard to get a good photo of it as i was driving out of town. this is the best i got. i mean, i could only do so much as i was driving down the interstate at 75 miles an hour. i mean, 65 miles an hour. i was still in illinois as the sun rose. :)


saw a truck of turkeys around 6:30 a.m. - you can fit a lot of turkeys in a truck. good time to stop for a first breakfast.


cruising through iowa (speed limit's up to 70 at this point) around 10:30 a.m. - right around when i stopped for my second breakfast. i really enjoy driving through iowa. i find the hilly farm land to be quite beautiful and relaxing. honestly. (nothing i can say here will make that sound less sarcastic, will it? i'm being completely serious.)


i made it into south dakota early in the afternoon. oh yeah, minor detail i haven't told you yet. i decided to drive to south dakota this weekend. :) i decided on tuesday night that i would leave wednesday after work - drive several hours, sack out in a hotel & finish the drive thursday. then spent all day wednesday at work pricing flights into rapid city - because it just made more sense to fly than drive. by the time i left work wednesday i'd decided there was no way i could afford the trip. it was just too expensive. came home feeling defeated but distracting myself with plans of gardening, sewing & relaxing for my five day weekend. came home wednesday night, read some e-mails & called lynn. by the time we were halfway through our conversation i'd decided i was driving to south dakota, regardless of the price of gas. actually, halfway through our conversation i realized i'd started packing ... so i took that as a sign & went with it. :)

i left the house around 4:15 a.m. thursday. drove straight through - 14 hours on pure adrenaline. lynn didn't know i was coming. actually, i thought she might know ... because i may have hinted at it too much once i realized i was packing as we talked on the phone. but the element of surprise is huge with me. i love surprising people. so the adrenaline made the trip out pass very easily. i made it into town around 5:30 p.m. (if you're doing the math on that, keep in mind rapid city is an hour behind chicago.) and almost made it to her front door before she realized i was there.


and it turns out south dakota is pretty to drive through, as well. with better speed limits. ;)