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Home again on Thanksgiving Thursday.  We're thankful to have a car that deals well in snowy situations and that we didn't pile up at the bottom of an icy, steep hill in Des Moines Wednesday night with six other vehicles.  Perhaps I should begin at the beginning.  Last Friday we made preparations for a cat sitter, loaded up ALL the wool blankets and headed up to Madison, Wisconsin Saturday-Sunday.  Sunday we made a vacation of the day scooting all over Madison hitting thrift stores and Habitat Re-stores.  Monday we went to see the 2014 Aliner... It surprised Leofwyna being 10 instead of 12 feet but it does have two separate twin-size beds and all the bells and whistles we'd thought we could do without but the great price on this one meant we could have it all.  And without the cost of a much longer trip to New York State for the very basic and 'stripped' alternati  Two big skylights, heater, AC and water heater, water tank, sink, stove, 3-way refrigerator and all.  We arranged to pick it up Tuesday and did some more running around Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning.  It had snowed 4" in Madison Monday night but we were getting around just fine.  After picking up the camper (Call me Al) we got on the road and ended up stopping that night in Grinnell (east of Des Moines) as it was snowing along our route.

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Wednesday we drove on into Des Moines where we found another Habitat Restore and more tiles for the laundry room and stopped in at a few more Salvation Armys and DePaul stores through the afternoon. We planned on getting back on I-80 and being home before midnight.  What happened though is the damp streets froze up immediately at sundown and we found ourselves sliding on the steep streets heading out of town towards the Interstate.  After kissing the curb a couple times with the camper threatening to jack-knife we got onto residential streets and made our way back to a known commercial street and pulled into the first parking lot we saw.  Leofwyna wasn't going any further and called for a taxi to go to the nearest decent motel where we spent the night.

Thursday (Happy Thanksgiving) the day dawned clear and the sun made quick work of drying the streets.  The parking lot where we'd left the SUV and camper was in shadow and snow-covered so we had to unhook the camper, turn it and bring the SUV around to re-connect and proceed DOWN to the street and we had no further problem continuing down the road.  If there had been any more stores open Leofwyna would have looked for them but instead we got on the road home.

Back in Lincoln Friday was 99-cent sales at the Goodwills so we went 'round to all them and Leofwyna finally got her fill.

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Saturday was our opportunity for a Thanksgiving feast with friends and they had every possible side with a lovely turkey.  We had trouble getting there in time as we'd forgotten which building their new apartment was in but it turned out okay as they were still putting together a couple final sides.  At the end of the day Leofwyna headed over to sit with Sammy for a couple days while the Fasts are out of town.