05 Aug 2003
The Trip with Ewe

I think I'm sufficiently recovered from my Sunday excursion to write a bit about it. To make a long story short, a 12 hour jaunt turned into a 22 hour nightmare.

Willie only barfed twice - once (as expected) about 30 miles into the trip and again once we reached Madison. This is not to say that he was a happy dog - far from it. He drooled constantly, and I mean constantly. It was like he had a faucet set to his lips running full tilt from a firehose. He completely soaked two bath towels and a whole roll of super-absorbent shop rags. He was only happy when we stopped - and then only until he had to get back into the truck. He's just not a travelin' puppy....

We hit I90 outside of Rockford, IL about 11 am. That was about right timing - but things went rapidly downhill from there. We surmise that I90 was jammed with folks going to and from Wisconsin Dells - it was basically bumper to bumper at about 55 mile per hour. By the time we reached Janesville, we had determined to find an alternate route - so we found we could pick up US 14 in Janesville and that would take us (more or less directly, even) to Richland Center. We were saved!

Actually, we just thought we were saved. US 14 was under construction, pretty heavy construction, and we had many, many detours. To their credit, the Wisconsin DOT usually arranged logical, short detours, but they could do nothing about the drivers.

If Illinois drivers are speed freaks and maniacs, Wisconsin drivers are safty Nazis and Amish. I swear this one chopped hog with a badass biker on it should've been displaying the slow moving verhicle emblem - he never got his speed machine over 40, and we followed him for nearly an hour.

The so called "beltway" around Madison is a combination 2, 4 and six lane highway, with stoplights on the ramps and the occassional stoplight on the "freeway"! Hideous.

We finally arrived at Littledale, a trip that MapQuest said should take 5.5 hours, at 3 pm, nearly 9 hours (and 400 miles) after we left.

We managed to get our ewes selected and back on the road by 4:30pm. I'll try to get some pix of the girls up Real Soom Now - but for the time being you'll have to take my word that they really nice. Kevyn came over yesterday to see them and complimented Kris on what a good selection job she'd done.

Coming back was less eventful than going up - we returned a different route, via back roads into Freeport IL and thence to Rockford and the interstate via US 20. Not too many dstorms, but enough to make it a tedious trip. The sheep got a lot of attention from passing motorists, and when we stopped to eat in Freeport thay drew a positive crowd!

But we made it, and our breeding flock is now complete! Now our problem is getting Tup (our ram) to notice the girls - he's totlally uninterested! Ah, life!

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