On our way to Oregon

We have begun Manda's migration to Oregon. Friday night we picked up a 16' cargo van and tow dolly from the Penske truck rental in Howell. From there we loaded Manda's stuff (mostly shoes and clothes) and loaded her 11 year old Grand Am up on the tow dolly.

Next it was Bud's turn to get farmed out for the almost two weeks we would be traveling. Since he does not get along with my mother's male Jack Russell we take him out to Linda's Mom and Dad's house. They have two female dogs so Bud just takes over the house and everyone gets along reasonably well. Linda and I both looked for him all evening and every time we have stopped today for gas or just a rest stop we kept thinking we needed to get him out so he could do his potty thing. Funny how we get so conditioned to things in our live and have trouble making the change.

We managed to make it to Des Moines, Iowa the first day, about 500 miles. The cargo van worked well although we were both hoping for a little better then the 10 miles per gallon we have been getting today. Of course since we are headed west we have had a pretty good head wind, hopefully the wind will let up from here on out and we can get a little better mileage, expecially since gas prices are running about $4 per gallon.

The only other complint I have with the van is it doesn't have cruise! I have been so dependent on cruise control I have been having a lot of trouble maintaining a steady speed. It's getting worse as we are driving through the rolling hills of Iowa.

One thing I have to tell you about is a little joke we played on Manda. You see when we got home from Texas I noticed that she was missing one of the mufflers on the car. When asked about it she said it fell off on the express way and she didn't notice because her music was too loud. So when we called tonight we told her that everything was going well but someplace along the way we lost her car off the tow dolly. We told her we were to busy talking and listening to the radio to notice it was gone until we stopped for the night. She is so gulible she actually believed us! What a goof!