Heading Home

It was hard leaving Tuesday morning and saying our goodbyes.  This boy did not want to wake up, so I snuggled with him and cherished that quiet time together listening to him breathe softly.  There were tears when we left, but not just from the kids.  I'm glad the kids have this time to get spoiled by the grandparents and filled up on love so that they are full of nothing but smiles and happiness when they come home.

We were probably close to 15 miles away from our starting point when Todd took a deep breath and said "Holy moly.  I just saw a bear."  If it had registered faster, I would have hit the brakes (because I was driving) and thrown our minivan into reverse (because that's what minivans are made for...quick braking and stunt driving/shifting into reverse) and then proceeded to take pictures.  But I was just as shocked at hearing it as he was at seeing the big, black bear.  So I have no bear pics.  He said it was bigger than the cows in the previous pasture and it was close enough to the highway that he could see the pads on its feet as it slowly lumbered through the field.  Wow!  What a gift to see a wild bear.  Before this, neither of us has ever seen a bear other than in zoos or on videos.  There were no more bears after that, although we saw a handful of deer out during those early morning hours.

We stopped outside of Minneapolis to visit with Sean, an old high school friend of Todd's.  They taught tennis camps together in the summers.  We hung out for a coupla hours and had lunch together before we got back on the road.  I love this picture of these two friends! 

It seemed to take forever for us to drive through Wisconsin, even though we had these lovely skies keeping watch over us.

And it took us another forever to make it half way through Illinois.  But we had these lovely skies watching over us until the evening.

We drove through a patch of rain and the clouds darkened the sky so much that it was difficult to see all of the windmill farms.  They don't look very big until we were close and then they were absolutely massive in size.  These windmills are taller than our water towers and the blades may stretch the width of our house.  Easily.

When we stopped around 9pm to fill up the empty tank and switch driving/passenger seats, we were blown away by this sunset.  How gorgeous is this sky??

After driving a little over 1300 miles in two days, we made it home before 8pm Wednesday night.  It felt so good to sleep in our own bed again.  But the house feels so empty and quiet without the kids.  It felt so strange yesterday afternoon as I was finishing up work to know I didn't have to leave the house to go pick them up from summer camp.