OR to PA (Day 3)

4:45pm (Central Time) We welcomed Nebraska with a hearty “thank you” yesterday afternoon- leaving behind Wyoming, and hopefully, the worst of the weather related traveling delays.

For those of you who have not experienced Nebraska, you may be thankful. It is straight, flat and ultimately- purposeless in the life of the traveler. I know something about growing crops and stuff… things like that. For that, it may be “essential”, but for this purpose, worthless. For the traveler, it is empty space between you and your destination. There is very little you may actually care to see in Nebraska- perhaps the “Pony Express Station” that is off one of the exits. Or maybe one of the dozens of small towns just off the highway that probably only have any sort of business because of the highway. There are those unfortunate enough to have Nebraska as their destination- and that is a sad place to be.

Nebraska, for driving, however, was a breeze. Despite a few showers here and there along the road, we found it to be uneventful, non-picture worthy and ultimately, a 75-80mph blip on the trip-o-meter.

Now, before we left at 7am (45 minutes before crossing into Central Time), we watched the weather channel and saw some precipitation in Iowa- and the potential for some heay stuff. As we crossed over into Iowa, the clouds betrayed that prediction. They were light and speckled through the sky- leaving us in mostly sunshine weather. This could be nice, right?

Wrong. Oh so wrong! The clouds eventually darkened, and off in the distance to the north, east and south, we could see heavy rain. And eventually, we hit that. There were some areas of heavy, major rain! Lightning striking in the distance, as well. Having lived in Oregon for a year, I almost forgot that lightning storms exist! Most of the kids in our youth group had only ever seen lightning if it was really hot in the summer, and only up in the mountains. A “thunderstorm” would completely blow their minds!

I also had almost forgotten how much I love thunderstorms. They truly are an amazing display of God’s power and I revel in my Creator at the beauty of His Creation. However, I remembered how much I hate driving through heavy rain and such, too. Rachel took on the lion’s share of driving today- whereas I had driven the past 2 days straight and she would have ripped her hair out to just sit in the passenger’s seat one more day. So, at one point, she felt it necessary to stop at a rest area because she could not see the vehicles in front of her.

All of Iowa’s rest areas on I-80 are wireless hotspots. So, seeing as we could not connect to the internet last night (thank you very much Motel 6), I pulled out the laptop to check mail and look at the weather. So, getting on weather.com, I pull up the map of Iowa. There is a red outline around most of the state, signifying a “tornado watch” and I see a line of very severe storms (red, orange, yellow color on the Doppler) moving through the state. Approximately at our very location on the highway- about 50 miles outside of Des Moines. So much for leaving weather disturbances in Wyoming. At least rain, even heavy rain, doesn’t close the highway. Although the accidents that created a small traffic jam just after we returned to driving, did cause us to get off the exit and get back on the highway at that on-ramp. At least it happened between the off-ramp and on-ramp, thus allowing us to just cross the road and get back on the highway.

As I type this, the rain is bearing down on us. Not as heavy as it has been- maybe we’ve passed through the heaviest stuff. Maybe not. Maybe we’re traveling right along with it. But I do know this- each time the lightning strikes, my heart leaps. In a positive way. In the most positive way.

I realize today that I have missed REAL weather in the worst way. Living in Medford, we experienced basically two seasons, summer and winter. It drizzles and rains and is cloudy in the winter (with maybe a snowfall or two) and it is sunny and hot in the summer. There’s a little bit of in between in May and October, but it’s hardly anything to speak of. I have missed heavy downpours, spring mud, fall colors, snow- but surprisingly, not humidity! ;-)

9pm (Central Time)- we’ve stopped in Peru, IL for the night. In case Luke is reading, yes, that is the same town we stopped in on the way to Oregon. The heavy rains continued and actually got worse through a good portion of the afternoon- made it tough driving some of the way. When we got almost to the border of Iowa/Illinois, it was raining heavy. We found a weather forecast on the radio and found that we were right in the middle of some majorly heavy rain showers and tornado warnings! The clouds were wicked dark and it was just crazy. But we kept going. And eventually found our way out of the dark clouds into Illinois, where it was not raining hard.

When we arrived in Peru for the night, the guy at the counter of our hotel told us the storm we were going through was headed our way. And, sure enough- and hour after we got here, it began pouring and was totally windy. Crazy stuff…

So, we settle down for the night…