We arrived in Madison, WS a bit later than we expected, around 6:00pm. Our plan was to get up at a leisurely time and hit the road around 9:00am. It is a six hour drive to Madison, which would put us in around 3:00pm.
What actually happened was around 2:00am Monday morning, during a torrential rain (we got 3.5" overnight), I woke to a strange "popping" or "dripping" sound. I got up and found that we had water dripping out of the electrical box in the ceiling of our master bedroom to which the ceiling fan hangs. To make a tediously long story short, we had a massive roof leak in the eave above our bedroom. Water was running across the ceiling, between the 2nd and 3rd floors, and exiting through the electrical box in our bedroom ceiling. We spent the next several hours with buckets and towels trying to minimize the damage. Around 5:00am, we had the situation, more or less, under control but the leak continued. I caught a couple of hours of sleep while T monitored the situation, with the aid of some Champagne. At 8:00am, I called our insurance agent (Devin). He advised me to contact the roofer (we just had the house re-roofed last year) and have him cover the area and then determine whether the leak was due to poor installation or weather damage (any bets?). Based upon my previous experience with the roofer, I was a bit doubtful I would even be able to contact him. However, the stars were aligned for us and Bret's (the roofer) wife not only answered their phone, but promised Bret would get back with me shortly. He did and arrived around 9:30am. I showed him the leakage on the interior. Exterior, nothing was obviously wrong. Bret assured me he would find the problem and correct it and I should go ahead and leave town. He said he would call when he found the problem.
T got a couple of hours of sleep and then we packed up. We finally got off around noon. We drove north through light and heavy rain for the first 175 miles. Then things got better. We are now chilling out at our Hampton Inn in Madison. Tomorrow, we head west to De Smet, SD where we will visit the Laural Ingalls family homestead. We will be staying in the Prairie House Manor B&B for one night before moving on to Rapid City.
