NORTH DAKOTA!

It finally happened. We made it to North Dakota. Not without some excitement first, though.

Initially all was well. I dropped MacKenzie off with my big brother to enjoy some time at his place. She was excited to be staying with such an active person. I'm hoping she gets a lot of walks- hint, hint. Anyway, it was a gorgeous day on Thursday so I dropped the top and strapped MacKenzie in for the trip to Kokomo.

MacK hitting the road in my convertible...notice her seat belt.
Safety first. :)

Once she was safely with my brother I hurried home to pack with Jackson who was just returning from a business trip in Ohio. We stayed up late packing and hated ourselves for that when we got up at 4 a.m. on Friday morning. We got up and at 'em, though, and picked up Susie before heading to the airport. That is where things get ugly.

We drive right by the airport to park. I find this strange, but roll with the punches. The lot Susie pre-paid for us to park in was closed. There were signs leading us to park in another lot a couple of miles away. Great. It isn't 5 a.m. We're not tired. We're not trying to make a flight. No big deal. We get to the new parking lot and it is covered and the people are friendly. Score! We think our luck has turned around. We were wrong.

Security is a breeze and we even have time to stop at Starbucks before boarding. Then the announcement happens: the pilot for our flight got all the way to the airport from Fishers (45 minutes or so) before realizing that he did not have his I.D. with him. He absolutely could not enter the airport or the plane without that I.D. so he turned around and went home to get it. We'd go ahead and board and wait for him, they announce, and should only be about 15 minutes late. Cool.

We get on the plane. We're ready to go. No pilot. 30 minutes pass, no pilot. 45 minutes pass, no pilot. An hour passes, we finally have a pilot. It turns out there was a deadly wreck on I-69 and he got stuck in traffic. That's really sad, but try packing your stuff next time, Captain Idiot.

Mr. Forgetful The pilot comes on to tell us that now we're going to need more fuel because of the weather in Chicago. Ok. Then we get a delay because of that weather. Great. We're now going to miss our connection. Sweet. Jackson gets on the phone with United and gets us booked on a new flight. Then it looks like we may not make that flight. Our plane returns to the gate in Indy to let off passengers who now have no hope of reaching their final destination today. Yep. Keep in mind that one pilot's forgetfulness messed up about 11 people's entire day of travel plans. Jerk. We decide to stay on and hope for the best. We make it to Chicago and hustle across the huge airport to our connection. We get on the smallest plane ever made and then we wait. Again. They forgot to put sodas on this plane. Then an odd girl* in the 4th row starts chanting, "LET'S GO! WE CAN LIVE WITHOUT SODA! I NEED TO GET TO FARGO!"  (*that girl was me.) Finally the plane takes off and said girl refuses to take a soda from the flight attendant because that will show her! Or maybe she just fell asleep from all of the stress of possibly missing her 49th state. Anyway, I woke up a few minutes before we landed in Fargo, looked out the plane's window and thought the land was the most beautiful I'd ever seen. I quickly adjusted that thought and realized I was just so happy to actually see North Dakota's soil that it appeared prettier than it was.



Looks like we made it...

We got our rental car and headed out to see the area. Our hotel was just down the road from the airport and super nice. Once we'd dropped off our stuff we headed to downtown Fargo to get our 1/2 marathon packets for Saturday's race. There were a ton of people out and about exploring the area just like we were. We stopped in at a few stores and got a few little things before grabbing lunch.

FARGO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The race actually finished at this sign which was kind of cool- we didn't know that when we snapped the photo. After lunch/dinner we headed back to the hotel and pretty much crashed. The stressful day of travel was just too much and we wanted to all be rested for the 1/2 marathon. Annnnnnd even with the marathon there isn't much going on in Fargo.

Saturday morning turned out to be a little more chilly than we expected, but it was an otherwise nice morning. We grabbed breakfast, muddled our way into a parking spot without following the map (we'd regret that later) and headed for the start line. We got to the starting area and realized that bag drop (we'd gotten awesome little cinch bags to store our stuff in during the race) was back near where we parked. We'd have known that had we consulted our map. Whoops. Live and learn. Susie and I agreed to carry to bag so that Jackson could focus on his run. Then Jackson realized that he'd forgotten his running watch and wouldn't be able to time/pace himself and had a very uncharacteristic (no really, he just doesn't have these kinds of tantrums) meltdown. Things were not looking good. He decided there was nothing he could do about and opted to carry on. He wouldn't let me go back to the hotel to get it and risk missing the race. Darn him! That was my way out of walking 13.1 miles. Ha! I'm kidding. Kind of.

We wished him luck and said goodbye. Susie and I found our little spot in the corral and made our way through the race. It was pretty uneventful. We got to see the marathon leader twice as our courses overlapped. He was moving! We even got to see Jackson when part of the route doubled back on itself. (Note: the race layout stunk. Susie and I hated it for all of the doubling back and congestion.) Jackson was not as happy to see us as we were to see him. I was pleased at how far he'd made it in such a short time as we saw him around his mile 7 and the time was still really low. He was focused, though, and I understood that. We wished him well and carried on. We didn't see him again until mile 12.75 when we heard, "Come on, Petefish! Let's go!" I politely told him to hush and we finished the race.

Before and After...Mother and Son

Before and After....Wife and Husband

Since we'd had the bag with his stuff in it the whole time he had no idea how he did for time. (Yet another reason the mini is a superior race. You can go get a printout of your time immediately. No such thing here in Fargo!) I looked it up and saw that he'd finished below his goal time of 2 hours 20 minutes. I exclaimed, "YOU WON, BABE!" I know he didn't actually win, but I was just so excited that he beat his goal. He was elated. I think he almost cried.

HE DID IT!!!!!!

We all almost cried when we realized how sore we were. Susie and I discovered that we'd improved her last half marathon time (she did the Indy mini back in 2008) by almost 15 minutes so we celebrated that. It was a good day!

Susie with our hotel's buffalo...a warmup photo.

We were starving so we left the race and got cleaned up before hitting the highly recommended Applebee's near our hotel for lunch/dinner. I'm not kidding. The locals love Applebee's and told us to go there when we asked for ideas on where to eat while visiting. Weirdos. It was not anything special, but we were pretty hungry so it worked.

I knew the rest of the day we'd be pretty worthless so I convinced everyone to hop in the car and drive 1.5 hours to see the world's largest buffalo statue in Jamestown, ND. Yep. We drove all that way to see a big buffalo. There is a reason this is my 49th state, friends.

With the "World's Largest Buffalo"

We had a bit of excitement when the "saloon" near the buffalo had a shootout in front of it. This little old man even measured Jackson with a knotted rope while telling him how he would win shootout. OK. Creepy. We hit the road pretty quickly after that exchange.

The man who tried to put Jackson in the ground

We had dinner reservations at Jamestown's best restaurant (probably not a tough title to get, but still) in a couple of hours so we had time to kill. We headed out to the reservoir to see what was there. Not much, it turns out.

Jamestown Reservoir

We were too sore from the race to really walk around and explore much. Plus, storms had rolled in and the temperature dropped dramatically.

"Hiking"

Susie was having none of it and stayed in the car. I found this hilarious.

"I've seen reserviors before." -Susan Petefish

We finally decided that we had seen enough of Jamestown and didn't really need dinner. We canceled our reservations and headed back to Fargo. We stopped for a quick dessert before retiring for the evening. It was a good day and we were exhausted.