There and Back Again with the Three Sisters (even if Sisseton, South Dakota gets in your way).

The Hobbit, or There And Back Again, is not a story of my life though I am fairly short.

However, whenever I go on a road trip, particularly in my old vehicle, my prayers are very strong and very much about getting there and back again. I never make the assumption it will happen without prayer first, it’s that old.

This is the story of the Three Sisters going there and (thankfully) back again. The Three Sisters has hit the road before, as you may recall. We even have our own logo which you may find on a pathtag if you’re into Geocaching.

Just because we take ourselves seriously enough to have a logo doesn’t mean we actually take ourselves seriously. If American Airlines can call themselves both American and an airline, there’s clearly a lot of leeway on formalities. To illustrate, consider that we have a Three Sisters Snapchat group in which all we do is share photos of our feet when we’re in a restroom. Most of the resulting discussion is on the quality of the tile patterns of the floors, so we’re a tasteful bunch of Philistines I guess.

The Shepherd’s Harvest Festival is in Lake Elmo, Minnesota and to get to it, my sister Janet has to drive a rather large and unwieldy rig through the Twin Cities. This alone makes me, the navigator, a prayer warrior.

The rig is big; it’s a dually diesel pickup truck and a gigantic gooseneck camper trailer that has a full camper up front, then a mid-tack room, and then a trailer with two sections that could hold four horses or, as my sister suggested, “five or more if they are patient with you and vary in size and you’re desperate.”

For size comparison on this rig, consider it like this pulling the Empire State building behind your Subaru Forester.

While it may not be quite that large, the point is that it is no joke to deal with in traffic in the Twin Cities, nor are smaller roundabouts a joy. The ending result is that every turn must be carefully calculated, and you often have to pull to the left lane in order to make the sharp right turn, hoping that city drivers will understand what you’re doing and not pull up into the right lane or pull out a Glock and road rage you because you’re taking up parts of two lanes.

My sister does a great job, backing that thing up, hooking up the truck, running the camper rig—all of it.

But roundabouts. Remember that, because we’ll get to it later.

For the fiber and wool festival event, we live in the camper. We pack the tack room and front trailer section with wool, yarn, fleeces, sheep hides, tables, and about half of the plastic bins ever produced in China. We also have hay, straw, and feed for the sheep. The back section of the trailer holds the sheep, four California Reds. This year we had Fiona, my grand-nephew’s bottle-fed lamb.

Once we arrive, we get the sheep in the barn, set up the camper, and then set up the barn stall we use as a booth across from the sheep.

In accordance with all of Murphy’s Laws, this year’s Mother’s Day Weekend was spectacularly hot and peaked out on Sunday in the 90’s as both hot and windy, feeding a pernicious dry spell and blowing dust through the barn where we were situated. Farmers who have taken to clearing all trees from their land and tilling down to the black with the idea that the dirty 30’s can’t happen again likely enjoyed sending their topsoil to the far north.

Nevertheless, I would say the event was a success.

1. The Three Sisters did not get into a fisticuffs. My father is proud. My since-passed pugilist grandfather maybe would be less so.

2. No one was significantly injured, though the heat forced one sister to take a break and forced me to pick up a gallon jug of spring water and guzzle straight from it like an animal. I did throw out my back on Saturday and if you’re wondering what happened, it’s because I exist as an older model human being with no other outside reason being necessary.

3. There were record numbers of people at the event on Saturday and people bought quite a bit of my sister’s yarn and wool cloud, even as mobile signal faltered and Square gave vendors trying to run cards a decided finger.

4. We had a blast with our booth neighbor, Debbie, maybe having a wee bit too much fun one evening, and yet I think she’ll still talk to us next year.

5. We ate at a Mexican restaurant and the bathrooms at the venue are still on solid foundations.

6. We made it there and back again, admittedly with three extra sheep on the way back.

Saturday evening, with the gates closed and all the vendors camping on the site, is where the Three Sisters truly shone. Last year, due to cold and wet weather, we were inside the camper watching monster movies provided by yours truly. This year, we were social and wildly inappropriate in our jokes and conversation.

Debbie joined us at our camper, where we were finishing up our Mexican restaurant leftovers from the previous evening. We had a nice little unhealthy spread. There was Bubblr, some kind of hard cider and miniature red plastic party cups, and of course, my sister Janet’s traditional scotcheroos. I managed to bring carrots, apples, and my cheater store-bought 7-layer bars. Imagine our disappointment when I realized they only listed six layers on the front label.

“It’s supposed to be sweetened condensed milk, that’s what’s missing. These are as dry as the fields,” I said. I was very disappointed. Always go homemade. Flipping the package over, I tried to locate a magical seventh layer. “Looks like it might be some kind of glycol.”

“Round-up, basically,” Janet said.

I ate a few carrots, offering the rest of the group some as well. “With carrot math, you can eat two carrots to cancel out the scotcheroo bar,” I explained.

If that level of math impresses you, it shouldn’t at least surprise you. The weekend had been full of math. Sales tax and other percentages, converting ounces and pounds, multiplication, addition, subtraction, and all things counting back change. Now we had carrot math, a complicated and proprietary system for better health while embracing desserts.

The math we did not count on, however, was Sisseton, South Dakota traffic math.

From the event close-down on Sunday to the moment we were ready to hit the road, it was one hour. It was spectacularly hot, rushed, and frantic as every vendor had the same thing in mind: get home. Janet’s purchase of three lambs—a bottle-fed Wensleydale ram lamb and two Blue-Faced Leicester ewe lambs—was an additional component of complexity.

But by about 5 p.m., the trailer was hooked up, everything was stowed, the lambs were comfortable, we were sweating like disgusting pigs, and it was time to go.

“Wait, let’s have a prayer before we hit the road,” I said. We’d all done our walk-around, checking locks and latches and looking underneath to ensure everything was in good pre-flight order. But we had to pray.

Sitting in the truck cab, grabbing each other’s hands in a circle, I started to pray. “Lord, thank you for this wonderful weekend and the success you gave us. Thank you for good friends. You protected us on the drive here and during the event, and now I ask that you do the same going home. Put an angel in front of, on top of, and behind us. Watch over each mechanical part on this rig. Please get all souls on board back home safely, including the seven little sheep. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

And we were off.

By the time we got around Lake Traverse on the Minnesota side of the border, avoiding the bone-jarring South Dakota road on the western side, it was dark and the deer were suicidal. The winds were gusty and catching the rig with some aggression. Minnesota roads were better, though with slower speed limits and digital nagging signs if you were going too quickly, so for all of those reasons, we were driving slower than top speed when we headed into Sisseton, South Dakota.

Sisseton has a tough reputation. It also has two roundabouts right in a row. We headed into the first one, all of us weary, now 10:30 p.m.

At one point, we thought we’d seen a police car pull in behind us, but saw no lights. We’d already seen a Minnesota State Trooper fly by us earlier, siren blaring and lights flashing, to pull someone over.

There wasn’t much traffic in Sisseton, so the standard roundabout procedure would be less stressful than the much busier ones from earlier in the day. My sister pulled to the left over the middle line a bit, then into the roundabout and over to its far right edge as she traveled around it, watching the monstrous rig behind her flow perfectly. She didn’t nip a single bit of curb.

The right side of the road was lined with orange construction cones right next to the line, and since the rig and dual tires stick out a bit, she hugged the center line to avoid knocking them down.

“I sure envy Sisseton for having a real sit-down Pizza Hut still,” I said as we drove by.

“Yeah, seriously.”

We chugged along, the next roundabout not far ahead.

It’s then that we heard a siren.

“Is that the cop behind us?” Janet asked.

“Is he trying to go around?” I wondered, remembering the Minnesota State Trooper from earlier in the day.

“Just pull over, I guess,” Janet said.

It was amazing how we couldn’t see the flashing lights; the rig blocked everything unless you stuck your head out. The side mirrors didn’t even pick it up, and I had been watching them just to make sure no gates or doors on the rig had a mind of their own somewhere on the highway. The last thing I wanted to see was our bags or sheep bouncing behind us.

“Man, I didn’t see those lights until just now,” I said. “I see the red of your tail lights reflecting against the front of the trailer. That’s it.”

“Well shit. I hope I don’t have a bunch of lights out on the back of the trailer.”

A figure appeared at my sister’s window, and she rolled it down. There stood a police officer who was about twelve years old, because I’m at the age where almost all service providers look like they haven’t left high school yet.

She didn’t say anything. He flashed the light into the truck, revealing little more than a haphazard packing job, snacks, and chaos. No alcohol. Nothing nefarious. Three old ladies, tired.

“Is there a reason you didn’t pull over for me? I’ve been following you with my lights on for a while. You’ve been going over the middle line,” the policeman said, proceeding to describe driving behavior that was, in my opinion, one danger level up from knitting a scarf. “I’ll need to see your license and registration.”

Janet gave him her license, and he went back to run it. He said he’d just look up the registration.

“Hope he enjoys the worst driver’s license photo I’ve ever had,” she said, rifling through the papers trying to find proof of insurance. “The woman at the DMV hates me. Had to take off my glasses. She told me to look at the blue light and I said what blue light and that’s the photo she took.”

“I’m guessing he thought he was pulling over a drunk,” I said.

“I look drunk in that photo.”

He appeared back at the window and handed back her driver’s license. She was still trying to find the proof of insurance, but with all the papers and receipts in the truck—you have no idea—we couldn’t find the other as fast. Opening up the center console, I groaned. Piles of papers and receipts. And something else.

“So I gotta tell you that I have a Class 1 concealed carry license and I have my gun here in the console,” she told him. “The magazine isn’t in it, but I’m going to have to take it out to look in here.”

“I understand.”

She pulled it out and set it on the dash. I was glad I had left my gun back in South Dakota for my own singular driving. The last thing we needed to add to the quality of this stop was an armory on the dashboard.

“Is that a Glock?” he said, trying to make pleasant chit-chat in what was turning out to be a frustrating situation.

“No,” she said, curtly noting what it was before pulling out a small leather envelope in which the much-needed insurance document was supposed to be. “Here it is!” she said triumphantly, opening it up. “Aaaannd…it’s empty.”

The insurance paper wasn’t there. If the officer had wanted to do her taxes, though, he probably had all the info ready to go considering the number of receipts in the center console. But I had to assume tax evasion wasn’t the reason for the pull-over.

“Can I just call my husband and have him take a photo of it and text it to me?” she asked.

“Yes, but I’ll have to have you come back and sit in the car,” he said.

The first thing Jacqui and I did when she left the truck to go sit in the police car was turn on our phone flashlights to look at my sister’s driver’s license photo and laugh our heads off.

“I’ve seen worse,” I said. “Mine, mostly. The DMV has a little sloth—doing the whole DMV sloth joke I guess—and she told me to look at it. Well I had my glasses off and couldn’t see a darn thing so I’m looking all over and she got not only a photo of me but of all my chins. I guess they can now drive legally, too.”

A few minutes later, in which we discussed the stupidity of this traffic stop, our outlaw sister came back to the truck. She had a piece of paper in her hand when she climbed in and pulled the door shut.

“What happened in the car?” I asked.

“Welp, a call came over the radio about an unresponsive man on the ground in front of the laundromat and I told him that didn’t sound so great,” she stated matter-of-factly. “I said he’d probably need NARCAN. I think they have bigger fish to fry that three old ladies coming from a fiber festival, but what would I know. The whole car reeked of cigarette smoke.”

“What’d he say when you said that?”

“Not a word.”

“Did you get the proof of insurance?” I asked.

“Yeah, I called home and he took a picture and texted it to me,” she explained, putting the key in the ignition. “I told the officer my husband had this one job, to put the insurance in the vehicles. Whatever.”

It sounded like the officer had quite an adventure in that car.

“Did you get a ticket?”

“No, just a warning.”

“For doing what?”

“You’re not going to believe it,” she said as she clicked her seatbelt on and started the noisy diesel truck. “For driving too slowly. Apparently, I was going 20 in a 40.”

“But the roundabouts say 15.”

“I know.”

I couldn’t quite grasp it. “But you have a big trailer and—”

“Yeah, I know.”

As she slowly pulled onto the street, I was still confused.

“Now I’m paranoid,” she said as she eased down the road. “Am I going fast enough to be safe? Too close to the middle when there’s no one else on the road? I have no idea.”

There are moments when a piece of information drops in my lap that shuts my mental gears down. Just two weeks ago, I learned something huge and random about a childhood friend that basically caused a brain reboot, and this was doing the same.

“But the roundabout is 15.”

“Yes.”

“There’s another one just up ahead.”

“Yes.”

“So you have to get up to 40 between them?”

“I guess.”

“It’s dark.”

“Yes.”

“We were trying not to hit the cones or drive over the roundabout.”

“I know.”

I paused. “I just don’t understand.”

“It’s not the first time I’ve been pulled over,” my sister said wearily as she drove down the dark road, trying not to hug the middle line and not to go too slowly, though these are the standard driving behaviors we all have in the pitch-black night when deer are darting about, particularly when when you can’t stop quickly due to what you’re pulling. It felt like the police officer had sent us lurching towards an insurance incident with his confusing traffic stop.

“When did you get a speeding ticket?” Jacqui asked.

“Sunday morning on the way to church.”

We all snickered.

“Yeah, we were late and I was flying and got pulled over,” she said. “They all know who I am because of being an EMT. So that was weird. Anyway, when she got done and handed me the ticket, I handed her one of those Gospel tracts Julie made, and off we went to church.”

“No way!”

“Yep. She handed me the ticket, I said thanks, I handed her the tract, and that was that.”

“Jesus came to fulfill the law, I guess,” I said.

Then I told them the time I served myself my own subpoena, but we won’t get into that here because I am an idiot and that was a pinnacle of proof. Nevertheless, the Sisseton incident had confused us. It’s a tough town to police, I suppose, and I’m sure he expected a much different scenario than what he ultimately found, no doubt thinking he was going to rack up a DUI instead of three weary women with a ginormous trailer full of bleating sheep.

The traffic stop, though annoying, was going to make a great and funny “remember when” story over campfire this summer and next year’s festival. But when frustrating things like that happen, I often wonder about timing.

I speculate and cannot know, but perhaps our prayer before we started was answered by getting us to stop in Sisseton for about fifteen minutes. We never know what is on the road ahead of us and at what moment the intersection happens. Just a few moments earlier or later makes the difference.

Or maybe it was nothing like that at all.

Perhaps a young police officer just needed to build some traffic stop confidence, and we were a good practice session.