Our morning started with the wonderful smell of bacon cooking...mmmm! We had a wonderful breakfast with my mom and dad. Thank you Dad for the yummy waffles that you made! Thank you mom and dad for giving us a wonderful place to stop and rest. We so wanted to stay longer but know that it will be nice to give Dave a day before going back to work.
We were actually on the road by 7:30am. Remember that rain that I told you we would bring to Iowa...well, it was here and it seemed to follow us for the next 3 hours. We had some intermittent breaks but by the afternoon we seemed to be in some full-blown thunderstorms with driving rain! Not so much fun for driving in. I tried to take a nap in the afternoon as I knew we were going to be driving all night, when Dave woke me up to read the alert on his phone- TORNADO WARNING in our area! What? I didn't even know where we were, how could they know there was tornado where we were????? :) We had the laptop going, the radio (which was on the emergency broadcast system) on, trying to figure out what to do. Do we stop, do we keep going? I was checking out all the trees, the overpasses, the ditches trying to figure out what we would do with our family if we spotted the tornado while on the highway. Not a good feeling.
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| Trying to navigate the map and come up with a plan. First, to figure out where we are! |
Fortunately, we came upon a Visitor's Center and stopped to get some shelter- along with many other people. Supposedly, a funnel had been spotted 2 miles away. I never did find out which way it was going for sure. Well, we stayed there for about 10 minutes and then it started clearing to our West, which was good I guess but we were going East with the storm and it still did not look good. So, we (reluctantly) got in the car and followed the storm. The tornadoes appeared to be going a couple miles north of our highway but we still had plenty of driving rain. We stopped for the tornado at 6:30pm and we were in TORRENTIAL downpours until 11PM!!!!!!!!
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| Here is the storm on radar that we are driving ALONG with! We are in the red. |
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| Our odometer at the end of the trip! |
It was VERY nice once we got out of the rain. Dave drove for a while and I was able to finish up the trip. We arrived at home at 5:40am and were SO thankful to be here safe and sound. Thank you LORD for an INCREDIBLE trip!!!! We brought the kids in and they fortunately fell right back to sleep. The air conditioner that wasn't working when we left in June...it is still not working, but my sister had come over and opened the windows for us. It was comfortable and we didn't have a problem sleeping. We slept until about 11am and then spent the day unloading the car and slowly unpacking. SO...Nice...TO...Be...HOME!!!!!
Our day ended with one more SWEET surprise. Our good friends, the Lockwoods, are home from being missionaries in South Africa. Michelle and James stopped by to bring us some food and say hello! Oh, what a blessing! They did not plan to stay long but a couple hours later we finally hugged and said good-bye. We are thankful for the blessing they are to our family and are so praying for their adjustment to being back in the states.
We have so much to be thankful for from our trip: family, friends, safety, good health, the chance to take this trip, and kids who enjoyed doing this crazy adventure. Thank you so much for your prayers for us and your interest in our trip. We love you all and thank God for the ways you have touched our lives. We loved being on our trip but it is good to be home!
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| We were welcomed home by a wonderful sign from our great neighbors, The Schreibers |
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