Shortcuts.

It shall be lame tonight, as we just got to Duluth, it's 10:30, and I'm ill equipped to do a proper entry.

The drive was a breeze and the girls were palatable the whole trip through. Their good natured outlook on road trips comes no doubt from the fact that they've had to endure a 13 hour marathon from Cincinnati. Even they seem aware that heading up to the Stalker's is like going out for milk.

So, let's talk traffic for a bit. On an average weekend, heading up at 5 or 6 on Friday will net you some frustrating time in traffic. This is absolutely guaranteed where 35s E and W come together, and will continue sporadically up through North Branch and possibly Pine City. Today is the start of Labor Day, which means the roads should have been absolutely gagging on a constant stream of cars and boats pouring northward.

Had we taken 35, it would surely have been like that.

Instead we took the 61 route. I can't complain, we still made good time. But on 3 different occassions we had the opportunity to see 35. What did we see? Traffic moving near the speed of sound. I honestly, seriously (and I know traffic is the dullest possible topic in the world) do not understand this. There should have been 1.4 million cars on the road, but it looked like 4 am on a Tuesday.

Fed up, we headed back to the interstate at North Branch. It's hard to see the highway from the entrance ramp, until you make the turn. Imagine my complete non-surprise when I started down the entrance to find traffic at an utter stop.

I'm going to stop trying to second guess life and just go with the flow.

Day two hundred and one.