February in the Midwest (The Trip Home)

The drive home.

On the trip down we managed to avoid the "great storm" and even shaved an hour off of the drive.  We figure it was mostly because Rilley is off of the medications that had given him an insatiable thirst which of course came with numerous bathroom breaks!  We completed the drive in just 15 hours.  So we had hoped that we would be able to complete the drive home in the same amount of time.

Picking up pooch!

We checked out of the hotel Saturday morning and headed over to the Veterinary Medical Center to pick Rilley up.  We ended up hitting the road just before 10am.  10am + 15 hrs = 1am...so we should be pulling into our driveway then.

Since Rilley received his final vaccine at the University, he needed to receive his regular
Imiquimod cream while on the road home.

Going for a quick walk at a Wisconsin Rest Area.

"Are we home yet?"

Obviously, we made the expected stops on the way home, but Rilley really seemed out of sorts.  Originally we thought that perhaps he had an upset stomach from the anesthetic the day before.  We even tracked down Dr. Pluhar back at the University for advice.  She figured that it may have had a lot to do with all the travelling we had been doing in the past few days.  Then, out of the blue, she came up with the idea that perhaps Rilley was missing "all the snacks he regularly gets at home between meals".  Har, har, Dr. Pluhar, very funny!  (Yeah, we had a discussion about his weight during his follow up exam, which is a legitimate concern.)  Fortunately, it turned out that he was simply upset as he settled down when Sara and I switched places and she cuddled with him in the back of the Jeep.

The last time we had done the drive we had wanted to try out White Castle (made famous by the Harold and Kumar movie).  So when we pulled off of the interstate in Indiana there was one of their locations!  So we did our own Harold (Sara) and Kumar (Me) Go To White Castle!  (No, the irony isn't lost on me...Harold was the smart one...well, so is Sara, after all she found the clinical trial that saved our little Beagle.)

The White Castle meal for two.
2 Fries, 2 Drinks and 10 Sliders.

As we were getting closer to the border, we didn't realize that a storm had ripped through eastern Michigan and into Ontario.  This made for an interesting drive once we reached Detroit.  There were cars in the ditch, spun out at the ramps and abandoned at the side of the highway.  The four wheel drive on the Jeep came in handy; this was the first time I had seriously needed it.  However, the slow down added another 2.5 hours to the drive and we ended up arriving home just after 3:30am on Sunday.

Yes, we were really tired!