Rain and Snow Mix

For the second time this trip I woke to read the clock as 6:30, got dressed quickly, and went out to the hotel lobby for coffee only to discover that it was 5:30.  I’ll have to look at the clock more closely when I first wake up.

We left Des Moines in a steady drizzle under cloudy skies, temperature in the mid-forties.  As we drove north, both the clouds and the temperature dropped and the drizzle increased.  By the time we got to the Minnesota line, it was 33º with a light snow.

We saw a billboard for the Spam Museum, but intriguing as that was, it would require a 40-mile detour, and we were set on getting to St Paul at a reasonable hour.  I’ll have to include that on the schedule on a future trip.  The anticipation will do us good.

Traffic built steadily as we neared the St Paul-Minneapolis metro area, with increasing intensity.  After the open spaces of eastern Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, eastern Colorado, Nebraska, and Iowa, the pushing and shoving of the traffic here seemed like an insult.  But we made it without incident.  It is again in the mid-forties, and we even saw a few small patches of blue in the sky.

We are in the suburbs, with artificial nature all about and a fair amount of traffic even on Sunday, even during a Vikings game, because everyone has to get in their car to do anything other than sit where they are.  

Tonight I will meet yet another of Andrea’s myriad cousins.  (He’s a cousin once-removed, actually.)  Andrea hasn’t seen him for 40 years.  As someone who doesn’t know her own few cousins, I really enjoy Andrea’s large family.

[A poor selection of pictures today.  When the farm fields and windbreaks were prettily dusted with snow, we had our heads down forging ahead on the almost-icy roads.]