Home Again, with PEEPS

I was on another trip for work this week and got home today basically right at 5:00. This time I went down into the heart of South Dakota - Redfield, Highmore, Chamberlain, Oacoma, Murdo, and Kadoka. Put another 900 miles on my car.

Last night I stayed at the Comfort Inn in Pierre. Very nice. They just remodeled the interior. Everything was nice and new and in good condition. One thing I liked was that the work desk was large - I had two laptops and a big inkjet printer on the desk and there was still plenty of room. The wireless internet connection was good on my work laptop but my way old personal laptop struggled. It usually does in hotels for some reason. Poor old thing.

Looking at the weather and roads online last night I had some concern about how my trip home might go. I could see the snow was moving out of the area but thought the roads might still be bad. I called my parents this morning, though, and knew I would not have a problem. They were already at 32 deg. and climbing. I was sure by the time I got to the area of concern that the ice/snow would be melting off.

I took Highway 83 all the way up from Pierre. There were dry roads until Gettysburg and then just wet roads all the way to Strasburg. Most parts had a little slush between the tracks but that wasn't a problem. I left Pierre at 9:45 and got to my parent's farm at Noon. When I hit the ND border the roads immediately improved. I think they did a better job at removing snow, so there was no slush. When I left Strasburg for Bismarck at 3:30 the roads were completely dry until it rained when I got close to Bismarck.

I had some extra time last night, so I went browsing at Wal-Mart. Yes, I did buy some PEEPS for my family. I noticed an interesting product in the Easter candy aisle. Barn Yard Buddies appear to be a copy of PEEPS. Barn Yard Buddies are a marshmallow candy in the shape of animals. They were strangely heavy, were made in China (!), and did not appear to be selling very well. I suppose they were heavy because of all the lead, right?

I took some photos of the product with my camera phone. I'm sure people thought I was strange - taking pictures of candy. The yellow ones are chicks, the blue ones are cows, and the purple ones are bunnies. They looked kind of grotesque to me.