Saturday 3/27

 Well, the day started and ended well enough, with a very unfortunate mishap on the Interstate in between. 

Woke up in Lincoln and we both did a run on the Rock Island trail that cuts through the middle of the city up towards downtown from our hotel. It was decent scenery, but cement the whole way. So, not great running, but it got the job done. Headed over to Zupan's one more time for brunch and so Jack could get some more quality time with Dash. He and Claire kept trying to hide the ball in the yard for Dash to find it, but it was too good for them. We headed west again around 1:00 PM with 40 min on I-80 yet before cutting south towards Nebraska. I was still a little paranoid about the box, but after an entire day of freeway driving, wasn't thinking nearly as much about it any more. There was however, and extremely strong crosswind and lots of semis in fairly heavy traffic. We were passing a semi when the paranoid nightmare actually came true. I looked in the rear view mirror and all of a sudden saw Kate's sleeping bag tumbling down the highway behind us. We quickly pulled over to find the roof box open. There wasn't a latch for it, but it was fairly hard to get open in the first place and figured that the wind wouldn't be pushing in that direction anyway. I guessed wrong. I ran the 600 meters back and was able to retrieve Kate's bag, but we also noticed that mine was missing. That seemed to be about it though. All the rest of the stuff in the box somehow hadn't budged. 

      It's funny that on road trips, it's not all that uncommon to see people pulled over, either readjusting stuff, or with car troubles. This was unfortunately the first time that it was us. I always have ratchet straps with, so I ratcheted down the top and also found a hook in the weeks that I rigged through a spot that was probably used for a lock at some point. 

     We looped back at the next off ramp and scanned the freeway for the 3ish miles where we had lost Kate's bag looking for my bag, but without any luck. I wasn't super excited to keep driving on the freeway with high winds and having my paranoia actually come true, but we gutted out 17 more miles to US 81 and headed south. 

     Stopped for coffee just across the border in Kansas and then again for a beer at a brewery in Salina, KS. Meandered another bit to Hutchinson, Kansas and had a good dinner at an Italian place, followed by a final leg after dinner to a hotel in Greensburg. I can't say I'd want to live in these towns, but they were nice to see and looked nice enough. In between is about what I pictured as for Kansas. Lots of Ag/Plains, fairly flat with some rolling hills, occasionally broken up by a river. Nothing all that exciting.

Toto, we're not in...Minneapolis anymore?

     We talked with our server quite a bit in Hutchinson who said he went up to Duluth and the North Shore every summer. They stayed in a lot of the lodges in the Two Harbors area, but also took day trips up to Grand Marais. He said he really liked Minnesota. Kind of funny to think of it as an out of state tourist destination.

     No more problems with the box after strapping it down better. It honestly probably would have never been a problem without the combination of such insane crosswinds and then semis to create odd pressure combinations. I'm not saying it didn't suck to lose a sleeping back, but we certainly came of incredibly lucky but recovering one of the two and the fact that somehow nothing else came off the top. It certainly could have been a lot worse.