The Great Zonio Moving Adventure Day 2

(picture originally uploaded to Flickr by Dystopos)

June 26, 2010 – Saturday

Today was our LONG day… 10 hour drive! We survived, though. Our children are awesome… and so is our dog. My arms did go numb, though, from driving the moving truck for that long.

Day 2 was the day for tears from both Erin and I.

Our first stop was to the bank to deposit some checks, including the check from our real estate lawyer from the sale of the house. We had opened an account at Wells Fargo when we visited CA last month knowing that we would need a US account. At the time we were told that it would be no problem to deposit the check which was a good thing since we would need some of the money to pay for insignificant things like gas and food on our trip. Well, I went into the Wells Fargo branch where we stayed in Eagan and was told that we couldn’t have access to the money for two to three weeks!

My first thought was, “Great! How in the world are we going to make it to California, now? Why God? This whole move was YOUR idea!”

I was able to deposit two smaller checks, though, that we would have access to by Tuesday. There were able to do that, at least. I think it was more they hated to see a grown man cry.

When I got to the car to let Erin know what happened, she reminded me of why we were doing this move: chasing the Wild Goose. She also reassured me that we would enough money to make it to CA… it’d be tight but we’d make it. I can’t imagine anyone else I’d want to write a life story with than Erin.

We had 10 hours of driving ahead of us! We drove from Eagan, MN to Hill City, SD.

Now, if you were watching the news on July 26th, you may have seen that there was a tornado in southwestern MN… This is where Erin’s tears come into the story. Living in Kentucky for university, I lived through a tornado watch or two. As the radio kept offering emergency warnings for tornadoes, lightning, hail and flash floods I wasn’t too worried. From what was being said, we would be driving along the southern edge of the storm so I wasn’t too worried. Erin, on the other hand, wasn’t so sure. As the sky turned that greenish-orange and lightning flashed and wind gusts hit the moving truck and our mini van, Erin relayed to me over the walkie-talkie that “if we have a Wizard of Oz experience and we die, it’s your fault!”

When we were on the other side of the storm, I heard on the radio that a tornado did touch down, as a result of that storm, about 10 miles north of where we were driving. Erin wasn’t impressed.

The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful. We finally pulled in to Hill City before 1 a.m. Tired and exhausted, we got the kids into bed.

Tomorrow, we were going to see Mt. Rushmore!