So a couple of days ago we celebrated Christmas Day with my wife’s family – I enjoyed some adult hot chocolate, had a chance to try out the (relatively) new Xbox Kinect, and had fun watching the kids open up a veritable mountain of Legos and pink Barbie-thingys and all sorts of other presents! It was a bit chaotic just because there were so many people in one place (9 adults, 2 kids, 2 dogs), but overall I think Cleo behaved just about as good as we could’ve expected her to, given the strange environment and all of the new faces, and it was nice to get to see people that we actually haven’t seen in over a year since our big road trip last summer…
Getting Colder Outside
Yesterday we finally arose, gathered ourselves and cleaned up around the hotel, and eventually loaded up the car in preparation for transit to our next destination – my own hometown of Gaylord, Michigan! Rumor had it that it was going to be very cold there during our stay, so I guess you could say the forcefield of frost that had developed over our car was simply to serve as a warning for even more frigid weather to come. 😉
Rear-View, Ahoy!
On the upside, having distributed a good number of the Christmas presents in our berth, at least we were given the treat of actually being able to see out the back window of our vehicle for this new leg of the trip!
Tunnels!
And if that wasn’t enough, we even got to drive through several tunnels during our quest from West Virginia to Michigan, something that I’ve never actually done before. Admittedly I did have to calm a slight fear of the entire mountain collapsing in around us as we zipped through these strange, darkened corridors made out of bathroom tiles, but I guess at least they weren’t as bad as the ones that actually go underwater…
Cleo’s Car Update
What can I say? Get this dog in the car and she’s just like a people, kicked back and relaxing, and generally just sleeping and looking out the windows a lot to pass the time. This leg was a bit shorter than the first – only 14 hours instead of 16 – but I honestly couldn’t be happier with how she’s been handling our time in the car because no doubt she could really make our lives hell if she wanted to act up! Instead, she just snuggles into the backseat with whoever’s riding with her at the moment, looking forward to the occasional breaks to stretch her legs, and generally just trying to make the best of it just like we are. Very proud puppy papa, is I…
Coming Soon
We got to my Mom’s house at roughly 1:30am. Cleo might not have made the best first impression with my Mom’s dog (and my old dog), Brandi … but then again, she is thirteen years old and doesn’t really “play” much with anybody anymore! On the other hand, she did get along much better with my sister’s dogs, Kirby and Sunny – Sunny, in particular, who’s basically still a puppy herself, albeit a very, very big puppy, so look forward to that in a future post!
Also, snow!
Spoiler: it’s very cold…