I Wonder as I Wander…

We had a ‘glup’ interesting trip to Jackson. We got on the plane for the 11 am flight and when they went to put up the steps, they couldn’t get them up—I heard the flight attendant say “I think they are busted!” So we had to get off the plane ‘while they fixed them’. Our first clue that things weren’t going to go well was when they sent us back into the unsecured area rather than the secured area. Pretty soon they said ‘come over and rebook your flights’. Of course we were rebooked to get to Jackson the next evening at 9 pm—and I was supposed to start judging Hallmarks at 8:30 am. And the really frustrating part was I had been upgraded to first class from the Cities to Memphis.

What to do?? They would have flown us to the cities and put us up there and then we could have gotten to Jackson by 11 am on Wed.—still too late. So we did the same trick that we did on the previous trip—we changed our rental car so we would pick it up in Memphis and drive to Jackson. Thank heavens Bob was along to drive! I sure appreciate that he travels with me a lot—and especially in times like this.


So we had some time to kill in the Falls--it’s also nice that the Falls airport has free WiFi—so we can get some work done. We got back on the plane and headed to the Cities. According to our schedule, we should have had 45 minutes in the Cities, but we ended up being 30 minutes late, so only had 15 minutes to get all the way across the airport—we broke our rule of walking all the way, and took the tram—but then we walked very fast all the rest of the way. So we got on the airplane—and it was empty! There were 10 rows in front of us—and counting us—there were only 7 people in those 30 seats. And then we sat there for another 30 minutes or so before we took off. We were lucky the flight attendants served our drinks fairly quickly, because the flight got really rough and they wouldn’t let us get out of our seats for the rest of the way. We really bumped along.

The (normally) two hour trip took three hours because the pilot was avoiding some bad weather. As we were getting off the plane—the wind was blowing so hard that the plane was rocking as it was sitting at the jet bridge. Since we couldn’t get out of our seats, by the time we landed we really had to go to the bathroom. So that was the first place we headed. When I went into the bathroom—there were several airport employees sitting in there, because there was a tornado warning. After we came out of the bathrooms, we walked down the hallway and they wouldn’t let us go any further, because a tornado had touched down. I guess an airplane on the ground had been blown over and a roof ripped off a Sears store at a nearby mall in Memphis. There was major damage at a college and a total of 44 people killed in Tennessee and Alabama from the tornados.

We had a three hour drive from Memphis to Jackson—it was pouring—with lots of major lightening—but at least no more tornados. We finally got to Jackson around 2 am.


I judged Hallmarks on Wed and Thurs—until late at night most of the time. Then Friday, I worked at the office—judging some more and meeting with people regarding the Educational Forums. Saturday was supposed to be a beautiful sunny day with temps in the 60s—so we wanted to get outside and enjoy it. Therefore, I judged until 11 pm on Friday night and then got up early and started in again—so that I was able to finish by 11 am. We went out hiking along the Reservoir and the Natchez Trace—in our short sleeved T-Shirts! It was so nice—and hard to believe that it was the middle of February.

The Natchez Trace was an old Indian Trail that was later used by settlers. Now it is a National Park Service Road. It runs from the middle of Tennessee, through the North West corner of Alabama, then down the center of Mississippi. Most of the trace is rural, along the road are farms and woodlands. In Mississippi, there are several places where the original trace crosses the road, the first picture is from there. Toward the southern end of the Natchez Trace there is a place called Cypress Swamp, which is a swamp that has a path around it and contains mostly Tupelo trees. The second picture is of it.

Our flight home was pretty uneventful—although we offered to give up our seats on the flight from Mpls to Int’l Falls—but then they didn’t need us—darn! When we flew into Int’l Falls at 3:30 pm the temperature was -15 with a wind blowing (and that was the high for the day)!! I couldn’t believe that we were hiking in 65 degrees weather one day and came back to a wind chill of -45 (and it got even colder that night)!

We had another trip to the cities for Ross and Richard’s annual Christmas Party. It was extra special this year, because we picked up Kara after school. Paul had dropped her off in the morning and he went on to St. Cloud. So we met Kara in Hibbing and she rode down to the cities with us. Paul came down Friday evening and we all ended up staying at Ross and Richards. (That way we were able to get some pinochle games in!)

Their party is always so much fun. It starts around 3 pm and sometimes goes as late as 2 am. This year it wrapped up around 11 pm. There are always ‘waves’ of people—most come for a couple hours and then leave—so after a little while there is a new group of people there.

Our Christmas was absolutely wonderful! The kids were home and we had lots of great food, wonderful Church Services, good card games, fun games, and relaxing massages! We even spent an afternoon outside and pushed each other into snow banks.

After Christmas—we journeyed to the cities to help Ross and Richard clean and fix up two of their apartment units. It’s always a lot of fun (and yet some work) to help them. Of course, we always go out to eat following a hard day’s work.

On the way home, we stopped at Kara and Paul’s and spent New Years with them. First we played some cards and watched a movie. On New Year’s eve, we snowmobiled out to where they had a huge stack of brush stacked up and had a great bonfire. We were outside from about 2 pm until 7 pm. It was a beautiful afternoon and evening—there was a lot of deep snow that we were wallowing around in. And the pine trees had a covering of snow which was absolutely gorgeous. We all said “how can anyone not love snow?” If we got cold at all, we would just move a little closer to the fire and warm up. After the sun went down, a million stars came out—so with the fire, sparks, and stars—it was breathtaking!

When we got back to the house, we thought we should stay up to greet the New Year, but we were all so tired, we just went to bed. New Year’s Day, we went and checked on the fire—it had really burnt everything and was totally out. Then Bob and I headed home.