Illinois odyssey

Our journey began last Wednesday morning as we left our house in Tucson a little after 7AM. Tina and Pat were in the minivan and Jon and I were in the big Penske truck towing his Honda Civic. We were in for a 11+ hour drive to Vega, Texas. In New Mexico, I told Jon that I wanted to stop and buy some Albuquerque Turkey jerky. He laughed but I told him not to because it only encouraged me! We had a great time listening to satellite radio as we drove. I was at the wheel and Jon was channel-surfing for good songs.

We got to Vega late and just wanted to get to bed. It rained that night which was a harbinger of future weather. It rained nearly our whole time in Texas which made freeway driving very nerve-wracking. On day 2 we were on the way to Springfield, MO by way of Oklahoma City. We were all very excited to stop for lunch at Toby Keith's "I Love This Bar And Grill" located in the "Bricktown" area of OKC. The food was good and we took lots of pictures (baby Jonas tried to eat his first French fry).

While there we discovered that the Murrah Building Memorial was just a mile away so we decided to go and were glad we did. It is a beautiful place, somber and serene. We came into a guided tour which had just begun and were amazed at the details of that horrendous attack on innocent men, women and children and the wonderful efforts and sacrifices of the rescue workers. While on the OKC freeway, we looked longing and lovingly at the Lawton exit knowing that is where our son Scott is faithfully serving his mission.

It seemed that almost as soon as we crossed the state line from Texas to Oklahoma, the rain stopped and the scenery turned green and lush. We noticed something there we will never see in Tucson, AZ; enormous lawnmowers cutting the grass which naturally grows in the median and along the sides of the road.

One of the challenges of driving such a long truck and trailer is that it is very difficult at times to negotiate turns, especially in close quarters. So when we arrived at the Springfield Comfort Inn (located, no kidding, on Evergreen St. fr all you Simpsons fans), I tried to circle the neighboring hotel to get back on the street but the lot did not go all the way around. I attempted to back up... well, suffice it to say that I sort of jackknifed and bent a piece of metal on the trailer. Not too serious but a lady who had just parked her car nearby and walked into the hotel came running back out when she heard the noise thinking I may have hit her car! So I just put it in drive and pulled out onto a lawn between the buildings and turned there. We had been about 10 hours on the road on day two.

The instructions for the truck said that we should only go 55 top speed. We maintained a pretty consistent speed of 63-64 MPH. But, of course, the van could travel upwards of 75-80 so we thought we would have to play catch-up most of the time but with their stops, we played passing leap-frog most of the time. Once, we had passed the van and soon it came up in the lane to our left. We look over and saw grandma Pat shooting us a fully-clothed "moon" against her passenger side window! As Jon and I laughed about it, I commented that it was a good thing it hadn't been a traditional "mooning" as poor Seth would have been scarred for life. Jon said Seth would not have been the only one scarred for life! I must say that Seth (4), Maryn (2) and baby Jonas did amazingly well on the whole 30 or so hours they were in their car seats. Just stops for potty, diaper changes and nursing. They did have their two-screen DVD movies running most of the time which kept their interest but still... Great kids!

We left Springfield heading toward Illinois and stopped in St. Louis to visit the Arch. In the first place, it is very hard finding a parking place not to mention driving a truck and trailer around streets originally designed for two-way buckboard traffic But we finally did park and hurried over to the arch with its air conditioning and restrooms! It is breathtaking but tickets for the trams which go to the top were not available for over two hours and we just couldn't wait that long. So we toured the very nice museum there and headed back to the vehicles. There and pretty much everywhere we stopped in the Midwest was hot and humid! Of course, this is not news to those familiar with that part of the country but we certainly weren't used to it! On Sunday Tina commented that she had always heard that Arizona was a "dry heat" and that now she understood what that meant!


We stopped for lunch at a unique McDonald's. It was built in an arch over the whole freeway. Pat was a little disconcerted eating while 18-wheelers rumbled under her feet! And to add to the discomfort, No A/C in the place! Ick.

On the last leg of our trip, Jon and I had a terrifying experience. We call it "the flying freeway tire of death". There was an older couple in a pickup towing a fifth-wheel. Now, this trailer had two axles and four tires. All of a sudden, the left rear trailer tire flies off and starts bouncing first onto the median and then into oncoming traffic. It bounced right near a car and mercifully, bounced over it and into the woods. It could have been bad! It did not appear that the driver knew anything was wrong and a car ahead of us rolled his passenger side window down and motioned to the driver of the pickup. Then an 18-wheeler that had seen everything, pulled in front of the pickup, put on its emergency flashers and started slowing. By now we were alongside the truck and I was going to try to box him in with the big rig but he indicated that he knew what had happened and began to pull over. As we passed, I saw the extra weight on the now one tire on the left and thought that he still might have trouble if the hub scraped the ground or the other tire blew... who knows? We were just glad to be in front of the guy and not behind anymore.

We finally arrived in Champaign in the late afternoon. We drove to the kids' new place and the landlady met us there with the keys. They live in a beautiful green, tree-lined neighborhood within sight of the playground of the local elementary school. We looked the place over, kind of wondering where we were going to fit all the stuff the next day. It is a type of a row house, four or five 3-level units in one building built maybe in the 1950's. There is a kind of small common back yard that slopes up to a back fence. At dusk, we saw something there that none of us except Pat had ever seen before... Fireflies! They were so cool! Jon said that it was a good omen! Well, except for later when we tried to turn the truck/trailer around in the cul-de-sac. There was one car in the way which prevented me from making the turn. So we had to back the Honda off the trailer, swing the trailer around, move the truck and reconnect the trailer empty. We then unhooked it in the corner of the Catholic church parking lot across the street where it stayed until Monday when Jon took the rig back.

The next morning, we headed over to the house early and got ready to unload. At 9AM the first ward member, an older brother, arrived to help us unpack. We got a bit worried hoping that someone else would show up! Of course, they did; 10 brothers including two missionaries. These two were a kind of unlikely pair. One was way over 6 feet tall and the other was a short redhead who did not look nearly old enough to be serving a mission! But we were glad for the help! Especially when they did not seem to mind carrying boxes up and down stairs.

After about 1 1/2 hours, all the stuff was inside and we set about putting it away! Pat noticed right away that in order to use the bathroom, you had to either go upstairs to the bedroom level or downstairs to the basement. She suggested to Tina a chamber pot for the main level! The rooms are small, there is no outlet in the upstairs bathroom, the lever in the tub that drains the water and lets it fill up creeps up during your shower and fills the tub, some of the outlets are not three-pronged. Just a few of the minor irritations of an older house. That night Tina's visiting teachers brought over dinner (soft tacos) and pie and ice cream for dessert! Yum!

Their ward is very friendly. Tina was a little disconcerted that everybody already seemed to know her name! Seth did great in Primary, Maryn not so great in Nursery, at least for now. After church and a delicious chicken cacciatore dinner, we drove over to the campus and walked around. It is gorgeous! Lots of green grass, old, established trees and stately buildings with white trimmed and paned windows.


At last, it was time for Jon to drive us to the Indianapolis airport for our flight home. It was a very teary scene for Pat and me. Tina held on till the end and cried a little. The kids really don't understand. I wish we had called the airline because our flight was delayed an hour, which we could have spent with the kids! Before we left, I found myself alone downstairs and I said a quick prayer to this effect: "Heavenly Father, please watch over our kids, especially now that they are so far from home." Then a thought occurred to me, they ARE home. This is their time and their adventure. Before they left we bought webcams so we can stay in visual touch.

Here is a postscript. We sat next to a clean cut young man on the plane from Indy. In conversation we found out that he was a soldier had just ended an 18 day furlough and was headed back to Ft. Riley in Kansas to return to duty in Iraq. He explained that he was stationed in a FOB (forward operations base) pretty much in the middle of the action. He had already lost 4 friends in combat. We expressed our support and admiration for his service. Pat noticed he was a little teary-eyed at one point and was looking at photos of home on his cell phone. She also got emotional thinking we had just left our kids in Illinois but that they would be safe there. She felt a great empathy for the mother of this boy (he was a boy to us). It sort of put our puny-in-comparison "trials" in perspective.