Call us wild and crazy, but my wife and I opted to ring in the new year by spending it with our toddler grandson and his parents, who live in Kansas City.

We got a late start on the six-hour journey, so we decided to break it up by spending a night in a hotel at the halfway point. This option became imperative when we ran into an impenetrable wall of fog which, combined with the nighttime darkness, reduced visibility to approximately two feet beyond our headlights.

“I can barely see two feet ahead of us!” muttered my wife who was at the wheel and has a penchant for stating the obvious. “You’d better find us a hotel soon or else.”

“Or else what?” I replied.

“Or else I’ll pull over to the shoulder and we’ll sleep in the car!”

We have a nice car, but it contains numerous hard surfaces; it isn’t a model that’s known for its comfy sleeping accommodations. I was able to heroically save the day by whipping out my smartphone and typing the word “hotel” into its map app.

We took the next exit off the interstate and were soon motoring down what appeared to be an eerie, abandoned highway out in the middle of nowhere. This was because the fog obscured the lights of nearby farms and any other forms of civilization that might exist in rural northeastern Nebraska. It was as if we were traveling down an infinite tunnel of haze.

But then a town materialized out of the gloom. We pulled into the parking lot of the first hotel we spotted. According to my map app, there were cheaper hostelries located only a mile away, but I wasn’t going to press the issue and be sentenced to sleeping in the car.

The next morning dawned clear and bright. After partaking of the hotel’s free breakfast — scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and cinnamon rolls, yum! — we were back on the road. We made excellent time, especially when compared to the previous night’s creeping pace in that creepy fog.

When we arrived at our grandson’s house, he immediately began to show us the latest masterwork he had constructed of Lego blocks. He explained, in toddler-speak, how this part was a spigot for orange juice and how that part gave out flowers. The whole contraption was mounted on wheels, giving the device the ability to distribute flowers and orange juice far and wide. At least that’s what I assumed.

The next day we took the lad to a nearby children’s museum. A museum that was heavily focused on — surprise! — dinosaurs. I don’t understand why kids nowadays are so enthralled by dinosaurs. This wasn’t the case when I was young, but maybe it’s because dinosaurs weren’t nearly as ancient back then.

The lobby of the museum featured a full-sized skeleton of a tyrannosaurus. Our grandson pointed out, correctly, that its teeth are sharp and that its tail is longer than Daddy’s pickup. I’m not biased or anything, but I couldn’t help but think how smart that little guy is.

I’d forgotten how energetic toddlers can be and that they often have the attention span of a housefly. It’s all “run here and look at this!” and “run there and look at that!” all the time. Just watching him dashing hither and yon made me feel tired.

Like many little boys, our grandson is fascinated by such things as lizards, frogs and bugs. One of the museum’s employees conducted a demonstration that involved feeding live crickets to a lizard. Our grandson watched for a good while, totally enthralled. It was among the few times that he held still for more than a few seconds.

A terrarium held a hermit crab, which was hard to spot due to its innate hermit-like personality. Someday I’ll have to tell our grandson about the hermit crab that his daddy once owned. A crab who proved to be an escape artist and whose desiccated remains were eventually found behind our couch.

We celebrated the new year at our grandson’s house by noshing on Italian takeout. My wife had lasagna — you can never go wrong with that — while I dined on seafood ravioli. The ravioli tasted like seafood, which brought back warm memories of enjoying New Year’s Eve oyster stew with my family when I was a youngster.

The evening was very enjoyable, although the carb overload caused my wife and me to be fast asleep long before midnight. This is pretty much normal for us.

Maybe we would have made it to midnight if we could have tapped into a certain little boy’s boundless energy.

— Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy” can be found at www.workman.com