Journey to Julesburg

We arrived in Julesburg, CO on last Saturday evening after an eventful journey. We thought that one week would be long enough to pack and get settled and even have like a little vacation. Boy were we wrong.

Let's start from the beginning (told from Melissa's perspective). We had intended to have the trailer packed up by the end of the day last Thursday so we could clean the house on Friday and head out in the late afternoon. The reality...on Friday morning we were still packing. We had also intended to leave our mini-van to be sold in Duluth. The pharmacy purchase includes a mini-van that is used for deliveries and we really wanted to travel together in one car. By 1pm, we had completely filled both the trailer and the truck and still had our suitcases and other small things to load. We decided to go ahead and pack the mini-van for me to drive. We had to pick up the girls from their last day at daycare by 5pm so at 4:30pm I drove off while Travis loaded up the last few things.

We didn't even leave Duluth until sometime after 6pm. Now, we stayed up late and got up early every day that week so we were pretty exhausted. Now, I (who am a big sleeper and don't do well driving at night) knew that we would need to drive as far as we could while the girls were sleeping so I decided to use her pharmaceutical knowledge for assistance. That's right, I, in all my brilliance thought it would be good to take some caffeine pills. Those of you who know me know that I DO NOT drink caffeine...pretty much ever. Now I actually used to teach a lecture on insomnia and drowsiness. You would think that I would remember how much caffeine is in a regular beverage. I will blame my miscalculation on my extreme exhaustion. I was thinking that one cup of coffee had between 200 and 300mg of caffeine (in reality, it's about half that) Each caffeine tablet has 200mg. A standard dose is two tablets. I took two tablets at like 7pm. Thus, I had the equivalent of about 3 or 4 cups of coffee...in a person who is caffeine naive. Needless to say, I was wired, my heart was racing, and my hands were shaking; but I was totally awake. We drove until about midnight and found a hotel. No matter how hard I tried, I COULD NOT get to sleep. The last time I looked at the clock was 3am. The girls woke us up at 6am. NOT good.

We hit the road at 8am and pulled into Julesburg at 7pm Mountain time (12 hours later). We encountered bad weather, at least a hundred miles of road construction, stops for the dog to pee and the baby to eat, and one nervous breakdown on my part when grooved pavement made sounds that I thought meant something was wrong with the van. Travis was able to navigate traffic in Omaha while feeding the baby and talking to me on the walkie-talkie...amazingly talented!

When we arrived, Travis' folks were here along with the current owner's of the pharmacy and a few other people. I honestly don't remember much due to extreme exhaustion. I do know that the people who we are renting our house from were kind enough to put milk, eggs, and bread in the fridge for us because the grocery store closes at 7pm. They got half the trailer unloaded to get to the beds so we could put the girls and me to sleep. Unbelievablely, I couldn't sleep...laid there for three hours before Travis came to bed and I finally went to sleep.

We've spent the whole week getting settled and we are still not done unpacking. We've got inventory at the store tomorrow which will be all kinds of fun. David and Shannon and the kids are coming up to watch the girls while we are at the store. D-Day is Monday when we will sign on the dotted line to become the official owner's of Abts Pharmacy and Gifts.

Stay tuned for the next installment in the saga.