Wigtons Go West – Day 2
We were 25 years old when we decided to become foster
parents. Kim joined us
when she was 17 and we were 26. She had
been through a lot. She stayed with us
from 2003-2006. We have stayed in touch,
but haven’t seen her very often since she moved to Wisconsin. She said we are her first visitors from her
native Ohio. We went to Golden Corral then to see her home. We were completely smitten by her three
beautiful children (our foster grandchildren!).
They are just precious. It was
really hard to leave. I wish so much we
lived closer and could be of more help to her.
I can’t imagine being a single parent.
Her kids are 63% Native American (Dad is full and Kim is 1/4th),
aren’t they gorgeous?!
We stayed in a trendy Aloft Hotel in Green Bay, that was
surprisingly affordable. Today we woke to a flat tire. We called AAA and they offered to come and
put our spare on (which was buried under all our stuff) or to tow us to a
repair place (which would be closed on a Sunday). We said, “No thanks!” and my quadruple A man
went out and put the spare on, ran to WalMart and got what he needed to plug
the tire and aired it up. Two hours
later, we were on the road.
I spent, what felt like, all morning navigating us out of
Green Bay to 90W, which will be our friend for the rest of the trip. Their county roads are lettered instead of
numbered so we were looking for A to ES to A to 22W to O to B to C to V to 21W
to Pp (ha!) then finally to 90W. In case
anyone ever needs to get out of there, that’s how you do it.
We ate cheese as much as possible while driving through Wisconsin.
The kids played video games for a bit then listened to audio
books of Junie B. Jones. Two hundred
years ago, moving Westward in a covered wagon, it was probably scary not
knowing where you’d sleep that night let alone where you’d end up living. We are surrounded by technology in our Volvo
station wagon and with a few clicks were able to determine what city we should
be in around dinner time tonight, where we should eat and make reservations at
a hotel with a pool. Before we even left
we were able to find a rental home in Keizer, Oregon (a suburb of Salem). Our good friends in Portland kindly visited
it for us to make sure it didn’t smell like cat pee. Life is so very different. I will keep thinking about this as we journey
down the road. The pioneers experienced life
much more intensely than we do now. Yes,
their lives were at risk daily, but they lived intensely.
On another note, Ben and I were talking earlier of how we
never expected to get to go to these places we’re going to this week. I likened it to wanting to visit the
pyramids, something we always wanted to do but never thought we would. Tomorrow we’ll be finishing our drive to Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota,
later in the week, we’ll stop at Yellowstone National Park for a couple of
days. It just doesn’t seem real.
Summary for
Global Thinkers pained by excessive detail:
Hours logged on the
road thus far: 20
*Miles: about
1000
*States we were in
today: WI, MN, SD (yesterday was OH, IN, IL, WI)
*Running total of
states: 6
Sanity Status:
Great! The kids were wonderful again. Less pressure today, calming down from a whirlwind
week.
Mood: Relaxed and
in awe (pensive?)
Major Incidents:
0 (flat tire is not major)
What we see this
second: windmill farm after windmill farm in Minnesota (and yes, the kids
had mini sodas at lunch to celebrate being in MN).
*new categories as of today
No comments:
Post a Comment