Tales from the road

I've arrived at Buena Vista, our cottage in Regina. It took a while...about 30 hours of driving, all told. And not without some adventures.

It's late right now, but since this blog is titled "The Daily Upload" I thought I should make an attempt to start keeping up with my name. Or else change the title to "The Occasional Upload." (More accurate perhaps, but not as sexy...) Anyway, before I hit the sack, I thought I'd brief you on our trip out here.

We started off with a problem. We were towing a trailer to Regina and we didn't even get out of the driveway on Thursday night before the trailer lights stopped working! Big problem, given it was dark out, etc. I tried to solve the problem, while Heather went back inside, convinced the trip was cursed and we wouldn't be going anywhere.

But after a couple of hours, I had figured out what was wrong (although I couldn't fix it right then) and we decided to head off with just running lights. Not a problem, I figured, since we had hoped to avoid major city traffic along the way. But because we were late leaving, we ended up driving through Chicago at morning rush hour...and then Minneapolis in the afternoon rush hour. Oh well...we made it.

The trouble was, by evening, we needed to find a place to stop. We had planned to drive right through, but the delays and stuff were working against us and we were all bushed. A VW Jetta isn't very big to start with, and it gets smaller every time you try to stretch out for some sleep!

We had hoped to find a hotel in Bismark, South Dakota, but the state fair (or something) was on, so at midnight we found ourselves with nowhere to stay! So we headed up to Minot, looking for a vacant room along the way...but nothing. The North Dakota state fair was also on this weekend. Not a room to be had anywhere.

So, by this time, I was exhausted and couldn't keep my eyes open. But Cory was sort of awake (after all, he had just slept for about 20 hours straight) so he took over and we headed north from Minot. Alas, the highway we chose turned out to be under major construction, so at 3 am, Cory found himself creeping along a chunk of sand, with no lane markers, in a fog that cut visibility to about 20 feet or so! Quite a ride.

But Cory, to his credit, stayed with it and eventually the road improved and the fog lifted. So after crossing the border back into Canada at Portal, we crawled into Estevan at 4 am, got a hotel room and crashed. We finally arrived in Regina this afternoon about 3 pm, tired, but glad to have had a decent sleep.

Tonight, we arrived out here at the cottage, where I've finally figured out how to get an Internet connection, so I can check my mail and post this note.

No more pictures, unfortunately. I was going to snap some in the car on our trip, but my camera got buried in the trunk and I never did get it out...so you'll just have to take my word for things.

That's it from the Traynor cottage for today. Stay tuned and the big adventure continues!