Late Night Wal-Mart Fun in Where Are We, Iowa

"DIS"CLAIMER: I will probably offend many people when I "dis" their home state or their favorite store, Wal-Mart. This is not to hurt any one's feelings. Just to share my adventures.

On our long drive in two short days road trip, (see previous post if you are confused as to why we were on a road trip) we encountered a few problems.

We started out in Phoenix and drove up through Flagstaff and into New Mexico. New Mexico was about as boring as it could get. Seriously. Flat land with NOTHING for miles and miles and miles. And when I say NOTHING, I mean NOTHING! Somewhere outside of Gallup, NM (What? You have never been there? You are missing NOTHING!) Jim realized that the none of the lights on the trailer were working. So, we pulled into a gas station (yes, surprising that we found one) and Jim noticed that the wires that connected the lights from the truck to the trailer were severed. Completely. Apparently U-Haul did not wrap the wires tight enough, so they were dragging on the road...and eventually came apart. So, just like McGyver, Jim borrows a box cutter and uses electrical tape to fix it. We had lights!

We drove up to Denver, CO where we spent the night at a friends house. We had a great time catching up with Jim's old classmate and his family. They were so generous to have us stay even though we were there for less than ten hours. And slept for part of that!

The next morning we left CO and drove through Wyoming and into Nebraska. There is NOTHING in Nebraska except corn fields. And lots of them. Even though it seemed prettier at first compared to NM, the corn fields got boring all too quickly. Finally we got into Iowa. Night time was settling in, but we wanted to push through until we got to WI. We were driving and driving and driving. We were in the middle of Iowa when Jim realized that we had no lights on the trailer or the back of the car. Not a good situation with a trailer on dark two-lane highways.

We stopped at a gas station. I got out and immediately got swarmed by bugs. I screamed and jumped back in the car--leaving Jim to figure out what was wrong with the trailer lights. He decided that he didn't know and we drove to the hotel close to the gas station--only to find out that they are OUT of rooms. Now what?

Jim decided that maybe it is a fuse. He pulled out the fuse. Back we went to the gas station where they carry every other fuse except one for the foreign made car we are driving. So, we asked for directions to a store that would be open that would have this. We got directions to the Wal-Mart. In Nowhere, IA. At 10:00pm. We were exhausted. This is not where we wanted to be going, but what else to do?

We found the Wal-Mart. Walked in and realized that Wal-Mart in Iowa smells the same as Wal-Mart in Arizona. And the same type of people shop there late at night. Ugghh...It makes me shudder. We quickly located the fuses and found we were in no better shape there. We decided to buy little self-adhesive lights to attach to the trailer. At least so it could be seen. It took us like 35 minutes in Wal-Mart. Mainly because even though there were like 12 people in line with basketfuls of stuff, they only had one register open with a clerk who moves slower than molasses. Lovely.

We get the lights attached and back on the road by like 11:15pm. We didn't make it to WI until almost 3:00am. But we made it. In one piece. And really glad to get out of the car!