Retirement = Day One

Our last day at work didn’t last the full day, Sandy left at 11:00 and John told her he thought he could be out by noon; the plan was to start the drive to Sioux Falls South Dakota so we could set up our residency. John was a little late leaving but we were on the road shortly after 1:00 PM with Sandy at the wheel of the CRV.

Sandy made the drive to Albert Lee Minnesota where we stopped to eat and buy fuel. We had run into light snow east of Albert Lee so John took the wheel for the final 160 miles, our plan was to get to Sioux Falls or as close as possible so we could start with the South Dakota DMV on Thursday morning.

Westbound traffic on I-90 was light but after an hour the snow was starting to blow which cut the visibility. At one point John thought he was coming up behind a truck because the snow was tumbling and swirling, we saw the truck for an instant and then it disappeared again into the snow but it was much closer than John expected. John slowed down and as we drove we would get intermittent glimpses of a tail light or two. We decided to stop at Fairmont Minnesota for the night and proceed on Thursday morning.

It is now Thursday night and we are still at the Super 8 in Fairmont waiting for the storm to move on. We got up this morning intent on finishing the trip to Sioux Falls at a slower pace as the wind was blowing hard; as we were warming up the car the news indicated that I-90 was closed between Worthington and Adrian which is in the direction we wanted to drive. As the morning went on the Interstate closure proceeded east and by mid-afternoon the wind was blowing at 30 mph plus and they closed the entrance ramps  here in Fairmont. We ate an early supper across the street at Perkins; the high winds are predicted to start letting up at midnight so we are hopeful we can resume our journey by morning.

So our first day of retirement was spent on R&R Lane.