Back to driving... we take off from Rogers and Cliff immediately says something that made me not so happy so we didn't speak for the first 30 mins of the drive. Nice start to the weekend... he asked me if I wanted to turn around and go back to Rogers. :-/ (I still love you honey, don't worry) Then everything was fine and dandy but it was raining raining raining already.
10:30am: I was exhausted so I decided to lay my seat back and take a little nap.
10:35am: I woke up to some major pot hole driving. Holy cow it felt/sounded like we were driving on a horrible gravel road! Bump bump bump, Cliff was swerving to miss as much as he could but it just didn't work! I knew we were in Oklahoma. lol!
11am-2pm: Nothing major happened...it rained and rained and rained and we stopped for lunch but it wasn't anything that the wonderful Cliff driver couldn't handle.
2pm: The sky is clearing out! I think we can see the sun a little! Hallelujah!!! I am so excited!!
2:37pm: I receive a text from my brother John "There are some super severe storms moving into Dallas soon. Be careful!" Great....perfection! We are just about to drive into Dallas. This will be grand.
3pm: We arrive to the Dallas metro area and are greeted by some horrendous winds and rain. We were traveling at about 30-40 mph for the rest of the trip. The rain was driving down so hard that people were pulling off of the interstate to wait it out... we would never do such a thing! By this time I was freaking out. My blood pressure was probably through the roof and I can't imagine what Cliff was feeling since he was the one behind the wheel! I was just waiting for the inevitable demise of our car/us. (never happened, thankfully!) The rain was quickly flooding the interstate...a car that was 2 cars ahead of us hydroplaned/ fishtailed 90degrees one way and then overcompensated and went 90degrees the other way. Scary but we were all going so slow that everyone was able to stay out of the cars way.
3:45m: We finally arrive at our hotel!!! We drove through some crazy water filled roadways after we exited..there was a river on our exit but we drove on through... the T-Rex can handle anything (even boating, apparently)! This is when we started to wonder if our concert was even going to take place. Seriously, we were going to an outdoor concert and we have general admission tickets on the LAWN. Yeah for us. So, I called the amphitheater and they said that they have a 'rain or shine' policy. (Umm...seriously? What about tornadoes? Will Dave play through those???) She suggested that we wear rain boots and bring a tarp to sit on.
6pm: We have determined that there is a slight possibility that the rain may let up and let us enjoy the reason we traveled all this way. We are off to search for a Target or Walmart so we can get the necessary supplies. We headed to where the Target was located, according to Google Maps. Not so much, it's the sight of a FUTURE SuperTarget... well that's just, umm...SUPER! So we head off in the opposite direction to find WalMart. We were successful there but the skies again opened up on our way to WalMart. This time, including ground lightning. This weather is just becoming comical!! We RAN into WalMart, soaking our shoes and pants. We found and purchased a tarp and rainboots. Yeah!!!
We then decided to head toward Superpages.com amphitheater to see if we could find a place to eat before the concert. No luck there but we did find the concert site so we decided to just park and then get something to eat inside the venue.
7:30pm: We are at the concert! Yeah!!! It's not raining!!! YEAH!!! We left our boots in the car so we could return them. They were so freakin' ugly that I couldn't imagine wearing them unless I absolutely had to. I'd rather wear wet tennis shoes any day. We went inside, got a (much needed) beverage and some nasty food then we went to scope out a location on the lawn.
Found a spot but it seemed to be a little bit of a crazy area, plus there is a pole kind of in the way so we decided to move to a nice little open area close by. We saw what looked like a mound of mud in this area but it was nothing that our tarp couldn't handle!
7:45pm: Drunk girl falls on me...
8pm: Dave starts playing! Yeah!!! It was great!!!
9:30pm: The sky opens up AGAIN. I had a poncho to wear but Cliff didn't so we stood up and Cliff held the tarp over our heads. So nice! I was only getting wet on my legs so it wasn't a big deal.
10pm: Cliff asks me if we can move over because he's getting bit by the ANTS that made the ANT hill that we were sitting on. lol.... It wasn't a mound of mud after all!
10:45pm: The concert ends :) It was really really fun!!!
10:45-11:30pm: The drive back to the hotel was not too bad. It was pouring again...we drove in some nice lake areas. We also saw where there had been an awful car accident on the interstate. That was scary.
11:30pm-8:30am: Showers and bed. Ahhhhh sleep! Uninterrupted sleep! I haven't had a night without a baby monitor in 14.5 months. It was pure bliss! We slept in for the first time in ages. Cliff said that the wonderful night of sleep he has was worth the $100 it cost us for the room! (like he gets up with Sam at night anyway) ;)
9:45am: We are off to IKEA!!! I was so excited to get to go to IKEA for the first time ever. Yeah! We headed on a tollroad to save us some time. We got to the tollbooth, went to a change only aisle, paid $1.05 and didn't get the green light...crap. It says we still owe $0.30... what the heck? We have NO MORE CHANGE! GRRR... we wanted to get the attention of a guy a few aisles down but it said NOT to get out of our car! So, I made Cliff back up 30 yds so we could go to the booth and tell the guy that the machine stole our money. Thankfully he believed us and let us go through!
10:30am: We arrive at IKEA and spend 2 hours drooling at everything. We could have spent an entire day there. It was wonderful. I especially loved the kid section. We bought Sam a chair, a bunny bath towel, a step stool, bibs and a rug for his room.
4:15pm: We met my mom in Alma to pick Sam up. It was so nice of her to meet us! That saved us 2 hours of driving!! It was great to see him again. He was very happy to see us too! Sweet boy!
6:30pm: We arrive back in Little Rock after one of the craziest weekends I have ever had. It was great to get away! Cliff said that concerts have always been a huge adventure for him.... I didn't know that we would have such an adventurous first concert together. I'd do it again with him, though! :)
**Edit to add: MIL does not have the swine flu. Just the plain flu!!!
This is so funny! And sweet! I'm SUPER glad you had SUPER time. ;) I love how you laid back to get a little nap and woke up 5 whole minutes later to a road full of pot holes. LoL! And I know Sam doesn't know us, but any time you need a babysitter in RussVegas, I will MAKE myself available. :) Hope you get to experience many more vacations soon!
ReplyDeletePS... Does your mother-in-law have swine flu after all??
Oh. My. Gosh. I laughed until I cried when I got to the ant part. I'm so glad you guys made it safely there and back! If I had known you were going through all of that, I would have been so worried.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you enjoyed the concert! It sounds like you guys had a great attitude about everything despite what you went through!
They played 'ants marching' right after I realized our ant situation. I thought that was pretty cool, even though I was getting eaten alive. I didn't let it ruin anything and I tried to make the best of it by dancing to the music without looking too crazy. They also played an interesting rendition of All Along the Watchtower that I think Dave would have liked. I put a link for him in the URL for this post if he wants to watch it.
ReplyDeleteOh, and right before we embarked on our journey (from the hotel to the concert), we hear the quote of the trip. The weather channel says: "if you find yourself in an outside area, seek shelter immediately!" while showing footage of the Cowboys training facility carnage. :o
Great trip, I'd do it all again. See, if we missed this one, we would be 0 and 2 for going to concerts, and we couldn't have that! Luckily the T-Rex could handle everything ma nature could dish out that day. I did find myself wishing we had packed oars and life jackets for the trip to the River Mesquite. Or maybe some pontoons and a small outboard motor. Next time....