Kansas Skies

 After being up most of the night with a feverish and moaning Lily, we slowly woke slightly later (but still quite early) to load up and head onto our next adventure. Lily puked in the kitchen sink just as we were getting ready to load her in the van. Thankfully I had saved a bunch of shopping bags for the road. Camilla took the copilot seat in the front and I squeezed into the back by Lily. 

We drove towards Keokuk and in a matter of about thirty minutes we had crossed from Illinois to Iowa to Missouri. It gave us all a chuckle. The drive across Missouri was beautiful as the fields were blanketed in an early morning fog. We pulled off for a quick breakfast at McDonalds and then trucked on towards Kansas with hopes of making it to Denver, Colorado by the evening. We had a good ten hour day of driving ahead of us. Thankfully the littles were exhausted after two weeks in Nauvoo and happily slept or quietly enjoyed the scenery.

As we drove across Kansas, the skies turned ugly and what looked to be a tornado began forming right above us on the highway. It started raining hard, so we turned on the local radio station to see what was going on. When we learned that baseball sized hail was expected to start falling near us, we seriously considered pulling over and waiting out the storm, but both of us felt that we should carry on.

It was so eerie watching the clouds move and pull together. As the radio sirens went off and announced the mile markers and potential weather, we were glad to know that we had come out ahead of the worst of it, and grateful we listened to the prompting to keep going even though logic told us to stop and take cover. The winds on either side of the freeway were insane looking as the rain pelted our van making visibility difficult, but we never did encounter the baseball sized hail. By the time we made it to our hotel late in the evening, Lily was feeling much better. The kids were all excited about the pool and spent a good few hours swimming before we went in search of dinner. Then we tucked in for the night, ready for another long day tomorrow.