Yesterday, Anneliese and I left Minneapolis in the bitter cold (school was cancelled due to cold) and went to North Carolina (also, pretty cold right now!). Annelisese has a college interview at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) on Saturday. Our first thought was to drive, but driving through the mountains in January with stops along the way to sleep and eat, with gas prices what they are, it financially wasn't much worse to just fly and driving through unfamiliar mountains in the middle of winter is never a good plan. So we flew into Raleigh via Atlanta with the thought that if our flight were delayed by weather, we could always rent a car there and drive. So we originally were going to leave Friday, but the only flight got us there fairly late, and with her interview the next morning, giving ourselves a cushion of a day seemed like a good idea. So we flew out Thursday morning and arrived in Raleigh around 6:30. By the time we got our rental car and found a place to stop for dinner, it was around 7:30. Well, somehow I had it in my head that we were heading EAST all the way--east from Minneapolis to Atlanta, and east from Atlanta to North Carolina, and we continued to go east from the airport. The bad part of this is that Winston-Salem is WEST of Raleigh! We stopped once to get out the Atlas and couldn't find where we were--even the mile markers didn't match up with where we should be. And there were few exits and absolutely no signs. So, slightly frantic, I left the highway, following gas and food signs to the small town of Burgaw, about 25 miles north of Wilmington. I went into the gas station with the atlas and asked the clerk to please point to where I was on the map. Well, she was young and couldn't do that (?!) but another man there asked where I was headed. When he said to follow 40 (which we had been on) through Raleigh and Durham I almost lost it--we had left from the airport in Raleigh and almost reached the coast!!! I was almost near tears at the thought of going back the way we came, then the way that we were supposed to go--and it was already 10 pm. Since I had told Joshua I would facetime him from the hotel, I called Randy so that he could tell Joshua and so that someone knew where we were. I used the clerk's phone at the gas station. So, we turned around, stopped for a diet coke along the way, then as we were getting closer to Winston-Salem realized that we were almost out of gas (gas light was on)--we first tried a station that was closed, then hoped we'd find one that was open around 12:30 at night. Luck was with us, and we finally found one before running out of gas, late at night, with few cars around, not many lights, and no cell phone in the cold. We eventually got to the hotel (we were never so happy to reach a hotel!), messaged Randy to let him know we were safe, and went to bed!
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