After 18 hours to North Dakota and 18 hours home...we finally made it! And it feels so good to be home. Something about living in the car just isn't as great as living in a home with a bed and real food. But it was the best decision we ever made to go up there. It was great to see our friends Anna and Dusty again and Maggie had a very wonderful time playing with Mira, Lynus, and Grey! Although, she was very worn out from all of the non-sleep and non-laziness that she passed out in the car pretty much the whole way home. She could barely keep her eyes open. It was really cute. Saturday, we went to the Transfer Student Getting Started meeting. We were able to meet people from the school, get Jon registered for classes, found out about financial aid, and got Jon's student ID taken. I must say that UND is one of the best schools I have ever been to. I haven't been to a lot but they are genuinely nice and want to help you succeed. I was very impressed at how much they offer to help you succeed. I am very excited for Jon! He was also able to meet an ROTC officer and become more personal with him. He seemed very nice and very helpful. I am so unbelievably excited for Jon! By the end of this year he will have 16 more hours of school under his belt as well as his fixed wing pilot's license! He will be doing what he loves! Woohoo!
North Dakota really isn't all that bad. It's still cold up there but Grand Forks has everything we need. They don't have the best selection of actual restaurants but we don't really eat out that much anyways so I don't think that it will matter a whole lot to us. I heard that during the wintery months that you get really crazy having to be inside all of the time but I am pretty much a home person anyway so hopefully that won't matter to me much to me. We might have also found a place to live. Quite a few couples are moving in August so we are bound to find somewhere to live. We were also able to spend a lot of time with the young couples in the ward. Out of probably 10 or so, only 2 don't have children. All of the kids are about the same age so I think our family will fit right in.
We also had a great preview of the snow. 30 minutes outside of Grand Forks, as we were heading home, we hit a wonderful snow storm that probably landed at least 3 inches of snow on the highway. All pictures and video are posted below. We forgot to take pictures of the school due to the cold and other school like things on our mind but we'll just take one when we go up in August. So, Enjoy!
Here is Jon as we began our trip. As you can see he was already bored!
For the trip up we had Maggie in the back of the car and every now and then she would lift her head up and look at us like we were crazy. She did very well though!
She would also find different areas to put her head. At one point I think she got her head stuck between the seat belt and the arm rest but she did manage to get her head out. As you can tell she was a little bored.
We were finally able to find a nice rest area that had a huge area for dogs to run around and it wasn't too close to the highway. So we let her out and she just ran and ran and ran!
She also found a tree where a cat had climbed up to the very bottom branch. We saw the cat but she didn't but she certainly smelled something.
So this is the first hour of our trip. Very intense driving. Our average speed was 40mph in a 75mph zone. As we were driving right outside Grand Forks we saw a snow plow enter the freeway(this was before we hit any snow) and as Jon predicted...it was not a good sign. We saw several snow plows during our trip to Fargo. Lots and lots of snow!
These are only a few pictures of cars that we saw stranded on the side of the road after they slid off the icy, treacherous road.
As you can kind of see above and below it wasn't just scary enough to slide into the ditch but in every ditch stood water from the melted ice. It was literally like having a river in the ditch. Sometimes it was only an inch deep and sometimes it was a foot deep. When the snow melts the water has nowhere to go because the ground is still so frozen that it won't soak up the water.
The wind was blowing the snow so hard that it would stick to the road signs. Some signs were covered so bad that you couldn't even tell what they said.
There really is two lanes on the highway but you can tell that they are there?
Here is a quick clip of the snow we encountered.
After we left North Dakota we finally got out of the nasty weather so we decided to stop, gas up, and pee. Well we then realized that we had snow and ice plastered to the front of the car. You can't even make out the H for Honda because it was solid ice. People walked by and looked at us like we were crazy. We actually met people from Dallas who were headed in that direction. Our words of advice...Good Luck!
And this is what Maggie did the whole way home. We put the seat down in the back and put her right behind the drivers seat. We forgot she was there half the time because she really did sleep the whole way home.
We had one last stop before we went home. My grandparents live in Bellevue, Ne. It's about 20 minutes South of Omaha. They were so excited to meet Maggie for the first time. We saw them on the way up and went bowling where my grandma works but of course we forgot to take pictures. Maggie had a great time with Grandma and Grandpa. And she loves the toy and blanket Grandma gave her.
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