By Adam Stewart
From the Newsroom
Maybe this is peeling back the curtain a little too much on my column-writing, but I often struggle to decide what to write about for The Hutchinson Tribune’s opinion page. What do I feel strongly enough to write about that won’t mostly consist of repeating what I’ve written about elsewhere in the paper?
Not this week, though. Since the previous edition of The Tribune hit newsstands, I’ve spent the majority of my week traveling and spending Christmas with my in-laws in Minnesota. There really isn’t much else for me to opine about this week.
Michelle and I hit the road just before dawn on Christmas Eve, but with thick fog, we didn’t see the sun for quite a while. The fog wasn’t too bad while we were on the familiar, four-lane divided highways between Hutchinson and Manhattan, where we dropped off some gifts for my brother-in-law and his wife, who couldn’t make the trip this time, and picked up some gifts from them for the nieces and nephew.
But heading north from Manhattan on unfamiliar highways—still in thick fog, more than two hours after sunrise—was a lot more stressful until the fog finally cleared shortly after noon. We even got a little bit of actual factual sunshine as we drove around Omaha. But between 3 and 4 p.m., we ran into more fog in Iowa, which continued all the way until we got to our hotel after dark. Luckily, as it got dark, we were able to follow other cars on Minnesota Highway 60, using their taillights as our own Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Our two days spent in Minnesota were great, spending time with Michelle’s older sister and younger brother and their families. My last visit to Minnesota was in 2019, before Michelle and I were even engaged. We’d seen them since then at weddings and a funeral, mostly in the Chicago area, but not just to spend time together.
The biggest highlight of our time in Minnesota was on Friday, when Michelle got her nieces and nephew—ranging in ages from 6 to 16—to sit down for a very bare-bones game of Dungeons & Dragons, kept simple enough for all of them to be able to follow along with even as first-time players, while Michelle improvised an adventure based on the LEGO figures that were available. Michelle did a great job keeping the kids engaged and incorporating their ideas, and for their part, the kids followed directions well and paid attention. It put such a big smile on my face to watch and listen. Almost as good was Friday evening when Michelle and I made one of my family recipes, barbecue meatballs, and there weren’t any leftovers.
On Saturday morning, we ate breakfast and packed up to head for home. What did we find when we took our things out to the car? More thick fog. It didn’t last as long as on Wednesday, but we still had to drive in it for a couple of hours in the morning before it cleared up.
We got home a little after 6 p.m. Saturday, eager to see our cats again. My in-laws had a pair of cats, Wesley and Oreo, but they were understandably shy with lots of extra people in the house.
I don’t have any big conclusions to make from the trip, but I guess I can draw a couple of smaller conclusions. I’m not a fan of driving through fog, and listening to an audiobook, even one that isn’t great, really helps pass the time on full-day road trips. I was still ready to be out of the car well before we were done either day, but it didn’t feel quite like we’d been in the car for 10 hours.
Adam Stewart is the assistant news editor of The Hutchinson Tribune. He can be reached at adam@hutchtribune.com.