Merry Christmas!

Mom and Dad got their teardrop camper yesterday! Yay!

We had as much adventure as you could pack into a day. We started off by going by my work in the morning so I could look up the phone number of the IAH lost-and-found on the net. Mom and Dad also got to see my office and and our swank neighborhood. We had breakfast at Caribou Coffee, then headed for Necedah. By the time we got there, we just had to have lunch before we picked up the trailer. Outside Subway, we go to watch a traffic accident being cleared.

Soon we pulled up to the "factory". When we introduced ourselves, they said, "Well, we had a fire."

After we picked our jaws up off the floor, they said that ours had been closest to the door and was not particularly damaged. They had been polishing all the soot off the outside, and if we didn't mind the smoky smell, we could have it; or, they'd work out something else. Well, it smelled like fresh varnish instead of smoke to us, so we said we'd take it! They were very apologetic about the whole thing. They spent a few hours showing us how to operate all the features of the trailer and its accessories. They even gave us a new side-entryway-tent accessory they had just developed, to compensate for the slight wear on the finish. Mom and Dad were very pleased with the trailer - it was everything they wanted! We hooked it up to the car and tested out the connections, and Buddy and Suby were ready to drive back to Minneapolis.

Half an hour down the road, we stopped at a gas station to get sodas. When we came out, we had our first people admiring and asking questions about the trailer!

A bit after six, we got into an incredibly heavy downpour, and had to pull off the freeway and hide under a gas station canopy because it was raining too hard to see to drive! When the rain let up a little, we went to McDonalds to get dinner while we waited for the rain to let up enough to continue. After about an hour, we continued on. By the time we reached the Minnesota border, it had stopped raining and we drove into a pretty sunset.

We finally got back to my apartment about 9:30pm. What a day! The trailer survived the rain with no problems! Now it's off to Sacramento then Seattle. :)