Chadron Adventure

So, I know I said it would be Tuesday or Wednesday when I would post it again, and here it is on Friday.  I've been reading - a lot.  In the past 2 weeks, I have managed to read The Boarder, The Help, and the 3rd - 6th books in the Stephanie Plum series.  I've just started Water For Elephants, have Middlesex, Under the Tuscan Sun (I've seen the movie 50 times, but have never read the book), and I Capture the Castle (I recently watched this movie on Netflix, and loved it, then I found the book by accident at the library).  The local library is also holding the 7th - 10th books in the Stephanie Plum series that my mom is going to pick up for me today and bring them out when she comes to pick up my niece and nephew who are spending the day with us.  I won't even mention the dozen or so new books sitting in my bookcase that are waiting to be read, too!

A pic of the autogate that is on the road between the two Stewart farms.

Last Thursday was a very frustrating, very long, and kind of scary day for us.  We left town around 7am, and expected to be in Chadron around noon, local time.  (*When ever I say or read the name "Chadron", it's always with a french accent in my mind.  Don't know why that is, but it is.)  Due to various reasons, but mostly due to the ungodly amount of road construction we encountered, we arrived about an hour and a half later than planned.  On our way, we pulled on to Autogate road to take a couple of pictures of the house my great-uncle had built for Irene when they were married.  We didn't have the heart to head over the next hill to see what horrible shape the old family farm was in (that's another long, bitter story).  We were being spied on as I was taking pictures and picking wheat trying to stop the few handfuls of wheat that kept jumping into my hand.

We got into town, checked into the hotel, then looked for the Highland Cemetery south of town.  Apparently, there are 2 Highland Cemetery, and the one I thought we wanted was only about 3.5 miles out, but the one we really wanted was around 25 miles out of town, not too far from where we had stopped to take pictures.  We didn't know that when we had stopped.

My mom and uncle had an appointment at 3:30 with the estate lawyer, so I dropped them off, then went to pick up some flowers for my 2 great-uncles, my grandparents, and my aunt.  And off I went.  I stopped at Greenwood Cemetery to make sure everybody there had flowers, and looked nice for Friday's graveside services.  Then, I went to the Catholic cemetery where my grandparents' stillborn baby girl is buried.  I was able to find a bright hot pink Gerbera Daisy for her, and as I was shoving it into the ground, I was disappointed to notice that her view of the crucifix is now obscured.

I had some time to kill, as I was still waiting for mom to call me to pick her and uncle up, so I went to the viewing.  I looked and looked, but failed to find Irene in that face.  Mom's godmother was there, so I chatted with her for a few minutes till mom called.  I picked them up, and we were debating on whether we wanted to head out to Highland Cemetery before we ate or after.  The skies to the north were really black, and the southern skies didn't look much better.  So, we put off supper for another hour, and were hoping to miss the heavy rain.  It barely sprinkled on us the entire time we were driving.  The whole way out there, mom was making worrisome comments about the rocks hitting the car...it's her new baby.  When we got out at the cemetery, we did notice a huge temperature change, but just shrugged it off.

We got past Chadron State Park, on our way back to town, when we started noticing things.  "Huh, looks like there was some rain while we were gone."  "Do you remember seeing those branches down earlier?"  "OH MY GOD!"

This is what was on the ground when we went back by Greenwood Cemetery to check on the flowers.  For the most part, the flowers survived.

This window is just down the hallway from our rooms.

The trailer park on the South edge of town got hit the worst.  The next 3 pictures are from there.  The middle one is part of a trailer that was tossed into a field along the east side of the park.

So, yeah.  I saved my mom's new car from complete destruction.  Okay, maybe not complete destruction, but it sounds good!