Travel fun...

If you didn't follow the travel debacle of last week on Facebook or read the last few blogs, you missed out.

The Journal team had quite the adventure in the Southwest. We went from trains, planes and automobiles. We didn't have any shower rings, and nobody had to share beds, and no car ended up as a heaped mess - so it wasn't a complete disaster.

It did, however, give us all a lesson on choosing your attitude when things get rough. Throughout the entire trip we all maintained our smiles, laughed a lot, and had a theory as to why we were being drug through the ringer just to get home.

Our snowy view from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

Our theory was that we didn't have any good Journal travel stories of our own. Everybody else has, and with two newbies (anything under 10 years is new) on the trip it was our time to shine. If you work for the Journal you're bound to have some bad travel foo. It's just inevitable.

This is actually the second trip nightmare for me. My first trip from hell was a couple years ago in Chamberlain, South Dakota when a freak April snowstorm locked us down for half a week. I've heard some great stories over the years. Some of them aren't blog friendly.

For example, one trip to NCBA thieves broke into the company van and took everything but the media kits. We're talking about clothes, television, cameras, the works. However, they obviously didn't want to advertise.

There have been coworkers stranded, soaked, and without a paddle on several occasions. Those stories have all become lore around here, and make great party icebreakers. We weren't alone in having travel issues because several of our farmer friends and industry colleagues had the same trouble. It all became quite comical, and made for a great editorial in the March 9 issue of High Plains Journal.

The doctored photo looks pretty legit!

Another laugh came on Monday morning when I got to my desk to see I had received a gift. I wondered who the jokester was, because we'd already gotten copies of the movie poster from "Trains, Planes and Automobiles" in our mailboxes when we arrived back to the office on Wednesday (nobody has fessed up to that yet). Instead it was a framed photo. It was the same photo from our snowy trip to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, only this time someone had taken the liberty of Photoshopping in what we missed.

He'd been there. He'd witnessed the majesty of one of the Seven Wonders of the World. This was one of his photos, and he decided to share it. I think it looks fitting behind us.

Now we can remember our trip forever. I'm sure the folks at the Journal will be laughing at our expense for years to come.

Let's hope they are, anyway.