Headed Home

So sad that we had to head home.  Brian and I could've stayed another week, but the girls were ready to get back home.  We packed up pretty efficiently and left the cabin around 11am.  Before going home though we made a quick stop in Manitou to pick up a t-shirt for Natalie and Rachel.  We had ice cream one more time at Colorado Custard-yummy and cheap!  Then we headed east.  Our trip home was a little eventful.  We did have to take back roads rather than the freeway because our car felt like acting up if we went over 75mph.  It really wasn't a big deal because we were going less miles cutting cross country and still able to go 65-70mph.   I was running a temp and wasn't feeling the best.  Caitlin and Emily said there lungs hurt but we figured out later the pain was actually sore muscles from horseback riding and white water rafting.  Somewhere in Nebraska I believe, we hit a mini storm-with HAIL.  ugh.  No damage luckily but it was very noisy and I thought for sure we'd have little divits all over the car.  Caitlin slept through the whole thing.  I don't know how she did it.  Around 11:00pm we were lucky enough to get pulled over by a very nice officer in Nebraska when we were running on gas fumes.  The stop woke the girls up and they were a little concerned when the officer asked Brian to go back to the squad car.  It seemed like forever and I thought for sure there would be no gas to get to the town that was 4 miles away.  But all went well and we were able to get gas and keep on driving.  We pulled into St. Peter around 4:30am.  It was thee best family vacation we've had!

Side note:  2 days after we left, Denver had 6 tornado touchdowns and hail that covered the ground that looked like snow and Colorado Springs had flash flooding.  2 weeks after we left, the Colorado Springs area had the devastating wild fires.  The cabin that we stayed in was fine, but they were on the line of the evacuation area.  All the attractions that we went to in the area were closed for a couple days.  Amazing.