What should have taken an hour and a half took nearly 3 hours.
Every church, pumpkin patch, apple barn and BBQ place was having a festival.
Lines of bumper to bumper traffic for two miles or more on either side of every entrance.
Large gaggles of people wandering aimlessly in and out of the road at every one of these places.
Finally got to Helen and, oh yeah, it's still oktoberfest.
It took 45 minutes to get from one end to the other of the main road.
There was no place to park within a mile of the place in any direction.
Not a inch of sidewalk that wasn't being used.
Started back home, got something to eat and back on the road.
Mom had to drive home cause I started hurting so bad.
Caitlyn started getting sick.
Made it back to the house.
Everyone has retreated to their rooms.
BUT
The kids did create a new game and we did spend the day together talking.
What a day!!!!
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A flock of flirting flamingos is pure, passionate, pink pandemonium-a frenetic flamingle-mangle-a discordant discotheque of delirious dancing, flamboyant feathers, and flamingo lingo.
DH and I had a day similar to that yesterday. We are in north central Texas, not far from where all the flooding is taking place. About mid-day yesterday, DH decided that he just had to get to a Harbor Freight Tools store to get a doohickey that he needed. He just had to. First, he wanted to go to his usual store. But I'd heard that the freeway was shut down north of the town where that store is located. We would have traveled the FM roads, but DH did listen to me and agree to visit the new store, in the town that had the derailed train from flooding. Little did we know . . .
It rained in buckets on us most of the way there and most of the time we were in town. We got to Harbor Freight and DH shopped while I waited in the car and kept an eye on the weather. Then we went to lunch and decided to head on home from there. We usually take a different route home, where we go through the country from a state highway to the FM road that more or less dead-ends in our town just across from the street that runs beside our house. We encountered some water over the road, but DH took his time and slowed down so as not to hydroplane or flood the engine and we made it fine. Turned onto the intersecting road to head to the FM road and got about two or three miles out of town and were turned back because the road had flooded at a low bridge. Really unsafe driving conditions. So . . . we turned onto another FM road that we knew intersected the road we wanted and we headed that way. Barely got on the FM road and were stopped again due to a high water road closure. So we headed back to where the road we'd been on continued on into the town where they had the fertilizer plant explosion a few years ago. By this time, the rain was beginning to let up, and you could tell that a lot of the water had receded a bit. We made it fine into town and managed to gas up and make a pit stop there. Where we stopped was right off the freeway not far from where they had to close it earlier in the day. All lanes were open and moving, slow but steady. So we took the freeway back almost to our little town and got off the freeway to take the route we usually take home from shopping. The.bottom.fell.out.
We didn't encounter any road flooding on the state highway we were on, but there were a lot of flooded side roads, fields, and yards on the way. It was raining so hard that we could barely see where we were going, but we made it back to our little FM road and were really relieved to see traffic coming toward us, indicating that the road from there on was completely open.
A trip home that should have taken us 45 minutes, tops, under normal conditions, took us over three hours and several detours. After we got home, we started hearing some of the horror stories of the flooding in the town where we'd been shopping and having lunch just a few hours earlier. As I understand it, they got over 20 inches of rain in about 24 hours. That was the news this morning, and it's been raining all day. I'm sure they have even a higher amount by now. They've been under either a flash flood warning or a flash flood emergency since early yesterday afternoon.
A trip home that should have taken us 45 minutes, tops, under normal conditions, took us over three hours and several detours. After we got home, we started hearing some of the horror stories of the flooding in the town where we'd been shopping and having lunch just a few hours earlier. As I understand it, they got over 20 inches of rain in about 24 hours. That was the news this morning, and it's been raining all day. I'm sure they have even a higher amount by now. They've been under either a flash flood warning or a flash flood emergency since early yesterday afternoon.
My DH is adventurous. And hard-headed.
WOW !!!
Glad you made it home !
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The Principle of Least Interest: He who cares least about a relationship, controls it.
