The Cross-Country Adventure: Day Two, Monday, June 11, 2007

David took this photo on Day Two from the cab of the moving truck.

I had been dreading driving on freeways through cities. Day Two started with driving through Minneapolis at morning rush hour. Yuck! That morning, upon awakening, I still felt tired. After some coffee (I'm not normally a caffeine consumer, but figured I *needed* it during this drive!) and a low-on-protein continental breakfast at the motel, I started feeling quite shaky. I knew I needed protein, but we also needed to get on the road.

I cannot explain to you the terror I felt as we headed out on 35E that morning... all I could think of was how easily we could all get killed, with one wrong move. Semis were passing on both sides of us. I was praying that we wouldn't die, that I wouldn't be so nervous... I think you know the kind of desperate prayer I'm talking about. And to top it off, the batteries in our walkie talkies had gone dead so Matt was unable to talk me through the whole experience.

I'm not sure how long we drove and how many merges onto new freeways we had to maneuver until we stopped at a McDonald's for breakfast. I ate some protein, cried on Matt's shoulder a bit, and then we headed out once more. After we made it through our first big city of the trip, I formulated my plan of attack for the remainder of the trip. Step one: eat protein so I wouldn't "crash" again like that (enter Special K protein bars, which I kept close at hand the rest of the trip). Step two: consume enough caffeine to stay awake (Starbucks Vanilla Frappucinos became my close friend during this trip!).

The rest of the day went much better. We drove through Minnesota, Iowa and part of Missouri. Jesse threw up in the moving truck after swallowing something the wrong way, so we had a short stop for clean-up at a closed weigh station. Naomi had an "accident" because we didn't make it to a bathroom in time, so we stopped to change her clothes & the carseat cover. Other than that, the day went quite well. When we got to Kansas City, Missouri, I felt completely comfortable with city driving and was able to stick much closer to Matt in the moving truck this time!

We had orginally planned on staying in Arkansas with Matt's brother Jay, who we hadn't seen in 7 years, and his new wife, who we hadn't yet met. However, since we had left the U.P. later than planned, this meant we were not going to make it into Arkansas on Monday. After a couple phone calls to Jay, who was quite understanding about the whole thing, we began the search for just the right place to spend the night.

We stopped for the night (at a much more reasonable hour than the night before, I might add) at a Relax Inn in Cameron, Missouri. We had travelled about 410 miles that second day.