Road Trip Day Two

I'm back to tell you about day two on the road, but I have to pause a moment and give a shout out... Wooooooooo Hoooooooooo! I'm am super ecstatic that Coach Izzo is going to continue to be the basketball coach at MSU. In case you haven't heard over the last nine days there was talk that Izzo may go Pro to Cleveland. When I heard that when we were out in Arizona, I thought no way is he going anywhere. Then the days went on and on, and I became a little worried. Finally tonight though it's been confirmed, and I just watched the press conference and Izzo is a Spartan for LIFE! I just couldn't even imagine Spartan basketball without him, especially this next year with the team he has coming back. I'm elated with joy and it was the best news to hear today that he was going to continue on at MSU. All of us here in Spartan country are beyond thrilled, and I'm really looking forward to Spartan basketball next year! GO GREEN!!!!!!!!

Back to our trip details now. Day two (Wed., May 26th) we got started about 9:15am that morning from Eureka, MO where we had stayed the night. We grabbed a quick McD's breakfast and got on the road. This was the only morning our hotel didn't have breakfast. All our other hotels had free breakfast which was really nice. This was our LONG day on the road. It was one of the least exciting too since there really wasn't anything to stop and see like the Arch the day before. Most of the driving this day was through the state of Oklahoma. Not a very fun state to drive through. Not to mention the $8.00 of tolls we had to pay to get through there. Boring, long, long, and long drive, however the bonus was the speed limit was 75! After whipping through Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and part of Missouri all in a day, getting through Oklahoma seems like eternity. The only real excitement which wasn't a "good excitement" was going through Oklahoma City. The GPS didn't tell us to turn when we should have so we ended up driving smack through Oklahoma City instead of taking the bypass. It was of course rush hour time when we were passing through (that was our luck with big cities- we always managed to hit them at rush hour time) and on top of that there was a horrible storm. It was windy, pouring rain, and then hail. The traffic was bumper to bumper which ended up not being such a bad thing since it was raining so hard I could hardly see driving so it was better off that we were moving slowly. Not a fun time, especially for me as the driver because I hate driving in the rain and at night.

Finally we drove out of it and I handed the keys over to Greg to drive the rest of the way that day. The driving and storm had stressed me out. We ended up stopping a little ways past Oklahoma City for dinner and had to made a decision to stop for the night or keep driving. We either had to stop in this po-dunk town in Oklahoma where we had dinner or drive a little further into Texas to make it to Amarillo. There basically was nothing in between. Since it was getting late and starting to get dark, Greg said he'd drive if we kept going to Texas. I was fine with that and figured in the morning we'd be glad we had drove a little longer the day before so we'd have a much shorter day on day three. So after 724 miles, 13 hours (about 10 1/2 of driving and 2 1/2 hours consisting of stops for gas, restroom, traffic, & meals) we made it to Amarillo, TX for the night. Miraculously the kids did pretty good for such a long day on the road. They were ready to get out of the car and be done for the day when we stopped in the po-dunk town in Oklahoma, but they hung in there and were real troopers. Actually the first two days on the road were better than the first two nights at hotels. They seemed to let it all out at night at the hotels and were a little wild. So that in a nutshell was our day two. Like I said, not too exciting since it was all driving. We had lunch at a Sonic which we were glad to find since we don't have them around here. Greg and I used to eat at Sonic's when we drove to Florida several times. However this time it didn't really hit the spot like we thought it would and weren't too impressed. Then we had Subway for dinner which really isn't my favorite place, but we had gift cards from Christmas still so it was free and in that case... it worked. Day three was a little more exciting as we hit New Mexico, so stay tuned readers...