Rain, Rain Go Away

Day three and four were driving days. Tuesday morning we dragged (literally dragged) ourselves/ each other out of bed at the uncivilized hour of 5:30 am so that we could start our long drive from Greeley, Colorado to Columbia, Missouri. Yep, we drove all the way across Kansas. Kansas isn't nearly as flat as I thought it would be. It has lots of rolling hills and is very beautiful.

Anyway back to the story. The morning greeted us with lots of rain as we piled back into the car. The clouds were hanging low in the sky and seemed to be dumping buckets, or so we thought at the time. But by the time we reached Denver we found out what buckets really are. We hit Denver around 8:30, just in time to greet all the morning commuters, "Good Morning, Colorado." Not only did we arrive in time to say good morning but the little weather man decided to demonstrate the full power of his buckets and say good morning to everyone too.
Well, sopping wet we slowly made our way around Denver and stuck out eastward. But being sopping wet wasn't enough for the little weather man in the sky. The clouds hung low and it rained throughout our entire day. Only occasionally did we catch a break from the incessant rain, but they were only brief moments between cloudbursts containing no light or joy. In fact we did not see sunlight for almost 5 entire days!

That night as we came into Columbia I did see another beautiful light though. It had actually stopped raining for a short time, but the clouds were still thick and it was very dark. Out of the corner of my eye I kept seeing little twinkles off the side of the highway. At first I thought it was some kind of strange reflection from the oncoming traffic, but after ruling that out I began to worry that I was just going crazy as the twinkles grew more frequent, and then we passed a corn field that was all lit up as if some one had scattered Christmas lights among the rows. Suddenly I remembered - Fireflies!! Thousands of them! More than I ever saw at once in Illinois. The lit up the fields and forests along the freeway it was beautiful. As if some had found away to capture the starlight and toss it amongst the trees. Even the brief view of fireflies between cloud bursts was enough to lift my spirits and get ready for more driving and rain the next day.We pulled into Columbia and were cheerfully greeted by the Moore Family. We visited with them for a little while before going to bed and starting out again fairly early the next morning.

Wednesday we drove to Columbus, Ohio. We pulled in pretty late and went straight to our hotel. Sadly our hotel suite was nicer that our apartment in Wymount, but I suppose that really isn't too difficult. Thursday morning we stopped at Ohio State and had a tour of campus and met some current grad students that are studying linguistics (we already met with some professors in Boulder). Luckily it had stopped raining long enough for us to have the tour but as soon as we hit the road again the rain began. We headed out to Georgetown, Delaware and arrived late that evening, bringing with us more buckets of rain.