ON THE OPEN ROAD Ralph and Sharleen's Road Trip. Short on time, Big on Adventure By Sharleen Barbagallo Page 2
Finally! North Dakota, here we are!
It was a long drive to Fargo across a vast expanse of
Minnesota prairie. After traveling down some very long dirt roads, we finally
made it to the home of the man from whom we were getting the car.
A very long dirt road. Watch out! Don't chip the paint! The car was just as he described, so the paperwork was
signed and the keys were turned over to Ralph. Then we waited. You see,
Ralph wanted to make sure that our trip home would be as uneventful as
possible, so he mailed a package to the man's house with tools and parts
that might be needed if we had any car trouble on the journey back to Connecticut.
But, the package hadn't arrived, and UPS said it was in the truck, on it's
way. So, we looked at the other Mopar Iron that was in his garage, talked
cars, and waited. And waited. Finally, in the fading light of the day was
a distant dust trail (reminiscent of old Road Runner cartoons, only slower
in speed), could it be the UPS driver headed down the dirt road to deliver
our package? Yes!!!
Our new car and it's former family Now we could drive the 300 miles back to Minneapolis.
It was 7:45 in the evening. Ralph still thought this was no problem, energizer
bunny that he is. But, I was beginning to have serious doubts about making
it back to Minneapolis that night. I was getting tired. Now I had to drive
at night, with just myself in the car to keep me awake (yeah, right), following
Ralph, back across the blackness of the prairies. I called Laura and told
her not to wait up for us, as we might not be to her house until the early
hours of the morning. We drove and drove and I swear, the numbers on the
mileage markers along side of the highway never went down. We were never
going to get back, and I was ready to pass out. So, we pulled off into
a rest area and took a nap. And awoke to thunder and lightening and Ralph
pulling his hair out. He did not want to get caught in a rain storm with
his new convertible. What if there was hail, what if the car leaked? So,
we high tailed it out of there and finally made it back to the airport,
returned the rental car, and drove to Laura's home about 1 hour south of
Minneapolis. We got to her house about 4:30 in the morning, and it was
such a welcome sight. She left a light on for us, and the guest bedroom
beckoned us with a turned down bed and a side table set with a pitcher
of water and drinking glasses. That bed looked so heavenly, we collapsed
into it and dozed off.
Laura and Greta Page 1 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6
