Travel weekend from hell …

This past weekend I traveled up to the Northwest Chicago suburbs to visit my girls and to celebrate my eldest daughter’s 24th birthday.  Travel-wise, it was one of the worst trips in recent memory.  Or ever.  Yeah, I think EVER.

I left STL after work at 5pm and drove up to my sister’s apartment in Decatur, IL, which is roughly 2 1/2 – 3 hours from STL.  She has the H & R Block tax program and has done my U.S. Federal return for several years, which saves me about $100.  It’s always great to hang with my bestie, and we talked, had wine, and finally went to sleep.

There had been discussion between me, my ex-husband Larry, and my sister regarding possible bad weather across the Central part of the state, but I had no real idea what to expect.  You just never know about Illinois weather at this time of year:  snow might never materialize or blizzard conditions could come out of nowhere.

You guessed it … I had blizzard.

9 inches of snow fell on Chenoa, IL, where I had stopped.  I got a room at the only hotel in the town as there was no way, in a Mazda Miata convertible, I would’ve made it much farther than that.  Plus, seeing about 6 large vehicles and 3 semis in the center median/ditch, pretty much cemented my decision to bail on driving.

That’s a minivan in the ditch in the first photo.  The roads don’t look too bad in these pics, but later on, there was basically NO road to be seen.  Here are a couple more photos from outside the window of my hotel room:

I got to my ex’s home the next day about noon.  That evening, he and I took our birthday girl and our baby daughter (with her live-in) out to Bob Chinn’s Crab House in Wheeling, IL.  WARNING:  Do NOT go there without a bucket of money.  That shit is expensive.

I had to leave the next day (!), so I was on the road by 10:30am.  Everything was great, flyin’ down the highway….. until Bloomington, IL:

torrential rain for 172 miles.  Plus fog closer to the Mississippi River.

This was the trip from absolute hell.

I LOVE traveling, I LOVE seeing my children, but I HAAAATE the Midwest sometimes!

Gotta say, though, it was worth the hell-weather to hold my daughters in my arms.  It is then that all is right in my world.