A "Whirl-Wind" of activity!

Being the new grandparents that we are, Sweetie and I decided that we just HAD to go and visit the Little Peanut this past weekend. . .pictures, cute as they are, were just not doing it for us!
And really, you can't call it anything but a whirlwind of activity when you are driving nine-and-a-half-to-ten-hours-each-way for a weekend visit, but that does not stop Pretty! Even though our Saturday on the road was gray and rainy most of the way. . .

. . .we plugged on through, and I even started a sweater for Peanut!

As we drove, however, I noticed the skies getting darker, and everything looking stormy-stormy-stormy every once in awhile. Not wanting to knit veryverytightly on Peanut's sweater, I didn't even try to finish it. . .

Oh, I kept knitting on it periodically, but mostly I watched the sky and stressed out. I really am not a fan of stormy skies in the mountains. . .

Then, about an hour from the kids' house, we stopped for some dinner. When we got back onto the only-route-we-know-from-this-town-to-there, you know what we saw?

If you guessed a TORNADO(!). . .well, you would be correct! An actual, literal whirlwind was on the ground, tearing up houses and stores in it's path and blocking our path with downed power lines and debris. . . The poor GPS was overwhelmed because we would not follow her directions anymore. She "recalculated" over and over again, taking us to roads that were blocked by downed lines, trees, debris and law-enforcement personnel. She was frustrated, and we were frustrated, but Gramma and Grampa were NOT going back home after 8 1/2 hours on the road!

Well, we ended up buying ourselves a paper map. . .remember those?. . .because all of the locals just kept telling us to go back to that main road (apparently not understanding what we meant when we said, "The main road there has just been closed BY A LARGE TORNADO, and we cannot go that way,". . .I dunno, maybe it was our northern accent? Or maybe it was because they had not seen what we had seen. . .yet). Luckily, I learned to read a map in school (back in the olden days) using the "hunk o' paper" method (thank you, Mr. Hunk O. Paper!), and we were able to find a main route around the tornado's path.

It took us an extra hour, but eventually, we made it to our beloved Peanut. . .contented sigh!

Although there had also been a tornado that had touched down very close to her house during the storms, she was blissfully unaffected, and we were all thankful. Unlike these folks (just a few miles away) who lost everything, Army Boy and Wifey Poo only lost power for about 24 hours.We all had a very nice visit, and our return trip on Monday was uneventful. We were able to take that main road out of town, and passed the place where we saw that storm, our jaws in our laps at the amount of damage we saw. . .On the way home, we had sunshine all the way. We worked a very difficult crossword puzzle. . .

. . .and I finished the Spring Garden Tee for Peanut. It was a nice day for a drive.

Knitting and Crosswords and Whirl-Winds, Oh My!

Thanks for stopping by, and Knit in Good Health!

PS - if you want to see what we saw (I could not work the video on my phone, ugh!), this video was taken very near where we were as the storm went by (my apologies for the first 14 seconds, or so. . .this person was also not too familiar with her camera, apparently. . .'course she did get the video that I did not). I understand this twister was on the ground for over 60 miles!