Here’s your quiz: what do four states, Carhenge, and a tornado have in common? If you said my sister and me, you’ve been paying attention.
This all got started when my sister and I drove six hours from home, into Wyoming, to visit family. We had a full day for the return trip, so why not go a different way?
Ah, you can see the problems forming like storm clouds on the horizon, huh?
Hold that metaphor. You’ll need it later.
We started out in Wyoming (state one) and drove east to Rapid City, South Dakota (state two) for breakfast. The skies were vast and clear blue.
Then we turned south toward Scottsbluff, Nebraska (state three), inspired by the prairie, the rocky bluffs, and massive fluffy clouds.
Detouring to the Replica
Then somebody in the car who wasn’t me wanted to go to Carhenge. Why not? We re-programmed our maps app.
Carhenge features dented cars and pickups buried and arranged like a to-scale replica of Stonehenge.
The founder’s motto is “Why not?”
After checking out every old car in the park, we reprogrammed our maps app to take us home. We’d get back to Colorado (state four) early afternoon.
That’s what we thought.
Our maps took us east. We didn’t notice because the road curved like limp spaghetti. Well, and because we were talking a lot, too.
“We’d better not be going through Sidney,” I said.
“Why?”
“It’s out of our way.” I checked the app.
Going East After All
We were heading straight for Sidney. Too late to correct. We were better off staying the course and getting home from the east rather than north.
As we closed in on our hometown, I was studying the weather app when my sister said, “Those clouds south of us look ugly.”
“Radar shows the red spot in the storm will stay south of us. You won’t have to drive through it this time.”
When we were out on the road and came onto a storm, she was always the one driving through the red spot–that howling, angry rain-and-wind part of the storm. She gets growly about that sometimes. “Do you see what I see?”
What We Both Saw
I looked up from the app. “A tornado.” I loaded up the camera app.
I shot pictures while she fidgeted. To be fair, the tornado was more of a wannabe with a wimpy, pale tail.
“It won’t cross the road,” I said, looking at the weather app again. “And it’s dissipating.”
“I’m not driving past a tornado.” She veered across two lanes of traffic–she checked first–and took us off in yet another direction.
Our six-hour trip took about ten hours. But the tornado subsided. We visited Carhenge. And we did not go through a fifth state to get home. A good day overall.
Why do we do these things?
Well, why not?