Cold Car Rentals

Special On The Road Edition: Minneapolis

The holiday journey to the midwest has begun. Yesterday we flew into the Twin Cities on the heels of a airplane accident in Denver, and a blizzard in Minnesota. It appears like we were lucky enough to miss both events, although the consequences of both affected our travel: delays in Denver (not much, however) and adjusting our trip to stay in the cities. 

It was a fairly easy plane trip, but the car rental was the interesting part of the day: if you are looking for a minivan to hold a couple of families, don’t rent a Sierra from Alamo. Both of the vans that they tried to give us had middle-row seat problems, and both of them had a full middle-row of seats….so it would be nearly impossible to get into the backseat with two car seats in that middle row. After some deliberation and several attempts at different cars, we ended up with a Dodge and everything seems to be okay. PS: it was -1 actual temperature when we were trying to get all of this figured out. 

After we got the car, we went and picked up Kari, Matthew, and Nora from the other terminal and headed for the hotel. The roads around here are really rough due to the snow and temperatures, so we decided to stay in the cities and wait for the morning to attempt travel. Attached to the hotel is an Outback Steakhouse, which is where we headed for dinner. I only mention that because there were 5.5 vegetarians attempting to eat dinner at an Outback….and somewhat surprisingly, we were able to pull it off. 

We awoke this morning to more bad roads and temperatures in the neighborhood of -12. The decision that lies before us is whether to make the 2 hour drive to West Salem, or the 2 hour drive to the farm. It’s a matter of roads being plowed, interstate versus secondary streets, etc, etc, etc. Perhaps some breakfast will clear our minds a little. Perhaps not. 

Here is a quick shot from last night: