A Work in Progress...: Road trip day 5 (not so boring South Dakota)

As we parted ways to go to our rooms on Day 4, my sister said, "oh yay we get to drive through boring South Dakota tomorrow." Day 5 our final destination was Fargo, ND. We got up and left at different times. One sister and her family wanted to stop at Wall Drug and the Corn Palace. The other sister's kids had not had much swim time so their goal was to get to the hotel as soon as possible so they could swim. My husband is a night owl and just wanted to take our time getting out of the hotel so he didn't get sleepy while driving. For our family stopping as little as possible is what works best. Once the two year old is out of his car seat then he is done and it is a fight to get him back in that seat.

I don't recall now what time we left the hotel, just that it was much later than I wanted to leave. My sisters had looked up the hotel the night before and seen that our next stop had not just a regular pool but a water park. I wanted the kids to get to swim too although they had had a lot of that since we started in the lead and stayed at an extra place along the route. I was grumpy and irritated and like any husband trying to appease his wife who was in a hurry to get where we were going, my husband put the pedal to the metal. We were traveling only a tad bit faster than traffic (going about 10 over) when we saw the lights and heard the siren behind us. Once pulled over the cop kindly asked my husband to step out of the car and follow him. It seemed like an eternity as I looked out the back window at not one but 3 cars, with drug sniffing dogs and the whole nine yards. Bekah starts crying. David is screaming to get out. A little more excitement than I would like.

Finally Jason returned to the car, ticket in hand. Apparently there is a drug ring out of Washington state traveling across the country smuggling drugs. It was the Washington plates that tipped the cop off and he was ecstatic to have pulled over a family from Washington and interrogate them. (I bet he got a bonus doughnut for that one) We were stopped for about 15-20 minutes total. (Remember that it is important later)

Determined not to speed anymore we set the cruise for 4 over so we could still make some progress. As we were traveling we could see the clouds getting darker. My sister sent me a text to turn on the radio. There were storm warnings that soon turned in to tornado warnings. We trudged ahead. My parents along with one sister were about an hour in front of us and my other sister was with in a couple of miles after they had to stop for 15 to 20 minutes for my nephew to poop.

We got to a place on the road where there were 6 semi trucks flipped over, one right after another. They all didn't even have emergency teams there yet. We missed the tornado/high winds by about 15 minutes. Chills?? I still have them when I think about it. $150 ticket might have saved our lives and poop saved my sister and her family.

Once we got to Fargo we all breathed a sigh of relief and gave my sister a bad time for calling South Dakota boring. The kids played for 2 hours in the pool. It was so fun!!