The drive home

When we left Mandy and Brad‘s on Sunday morning two weeks ago there was a light rain starting. By the time we had driven 30 miles, snow was flying and cars and trucks were off the road in ditches. What a change from the day before when the little girls were running around outside barefoot at the birthday party! Here are some photos of our drive home.

Iowa

South Dakota

Wyoming.  By the time we arrived in Wyoming the roads we much better, just slushy in places but the snow was deep.  Several storms had gone through since the week before when we drove to Omaha.

It IS pretty.  By this time most of the slush and ice were just on shady patches of the road but the landscape is beautiful.

The road to nowhere!!!  Well, into the mountains anyway. 

The Tetons or Crazy Mountains, I can’t remember which.  Lots of snow up there.

And then we passed into Montana. No snow at all except on the very highest peaks. It was an absolutely stunning drive through Montana with all of the fall colors.

I apologize for the blurriness of this photo. Once again we were flying down the interstate 80 miles an hour. This is the Madonna on the highest peak overlooking Butte, Montana. I had to zoom in quite a bit to get her.  I always feel like we’re almost home when we get to Butte, even though it’s another five hours or so of driving!  I guess after already driving 19 hours, five hours doesn’t seem like much!

Sorry for the bug splat  on the windshield in these pictures, but the scenery was too pretty not to share with you. This was heading up Lookout Pass on the Montana-Idaho border.  The trees were at their peak of color.

Absolutely stunning and the sky was so blue that day.

And this was heading down the last pass, Fourth of July Pass in Idaho. Almost to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho and home. Coeur d’Alene is only about 20 miles or so from our house.

Although the first day driving home was not fun with the snow and ice, at least it was while we were on the plains of the Midwest. I am so very thankful that we didn’t have any snow as we drove over the passes and mountains of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.

So, I’ve had my car five months and I have 12,000 miles on it! Over 6600 miles were from our two trips to Omaha. It has driven and handled great though. I am very thankful for a safe car to drive on these long trips.

I had this blanket almost finished before we left on the trip. Just one corner was left to knit so I didn’t take it with us.  It is the “make a long story short blanket” and is free on Ravelry.  I made this with Caron “Big Cake” yarn.  It is also a Christmas gift.  It is over 70 inches long and quite wide too.  My “to do” list is getting shorter!

Sweet Sherri sent me this beautiful fillet Crosstitch of a “Q” along with the mittens she made for the school children. Wasn’t that absolutely wonderful of her? I’m going to hang it up this weekend and I’ll show you where I put it in my next post.

I made a scarf this week for “Operation Gratitude.”Thank you to Kathyb at Compassion Knit” for telling me about this very worthy charity.  I used the Lion Brand Homespun yarn that I had left over from my shawl and it makes a very nice and squishy scarf.

Here are the first three pair of mittens for next year! I call them my “seed mittens.”  Ha ha! Hopefully it will encourage me to keep going. And so far it has. I have five more pair done already. That makes eight pair of mittens since Monday!! You can tell by this that my back hasn’t been doing very well this week.  Lots of sitting and knitting.  At least I am accomplishing something for someone else while I’m sitting around, right?

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend resting and relaxing.  Dee and Vera, I’m very jealous of your time together today.  Have fun knitting and having coffee together. :-)

“We Love because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19

A simple, but profound verse.  May we all remember it. I love each and every one of you.

Blessings,

Betsy