Blizzard

Our family is never short on adventures. We headed out for Christmas a day earlier than planned in order to get a jump on a storm that was headed in the direction we needed to travel. You would think, living in Wyoming, THAT's where we'd experience the tricky weather. But no. Things were going along just fine...there was some light snow, but that was nice. It made it feel festive. We left one town in southern Colorado and were busy counting down the hours we still had left to drive, when suddenly, we couldn't see the road. It wasn't like there were massive amounts of snow, but what was there was blowing and drifting. The wind was doing funny things with the snow, making it dance around in swirly patterns, which would have been beautiful had we not been on four wheels on a slick surface. With two of us alert, we could see reflectors every 20 yards or so, and by watching those, we managed to stay on the road. At 5-10 mph, with approx. 40 miles of road stretching ahead of us before the next town, it was a slow go. I was about as tense as I've ever been, and I can't imagine how Chris felt, being that he was doing the driving. We've been in some nasty situations before, but this took the cake. There were times when we could see nothing but a white cloud of snow engulfing us, and at those times, it was hard to know if we were going left, or right, or nowhere. The blowing snow like that causes an illusion of distance and direction. After 2-3 hours of that, we finally pulled into an old closed down truck stop outside of a tiny little town. It looked like a ghost town. There were others with the same idea as us, so we weren't completely alone out there. We spent a few hours in the trusty Jeep waiting for the sun to come up, and trying to grab a little bit of sleep. For the kids, it wasn't such a problem, but it's a little more difficult for these older bodies. We're still working the kinks out. I wish I had pictures, but I'll give you this visual image...WHITE. And if you can imagine a wind that kept the vehicle rocking all through the wee hours...you're there. By morning, the conditions weren't a whole lot better, but there was light, which made it a little bit better. We are glad to be here, safe and sound, and ready to enjoy the holidays. I have a list of things I'm thankful for today:

- Kids who are always ready to "go with the flow"
- A husband who keeps us safe
- A little dog with a great big bladder
- A full tank of gas (thanks dad, for constantly drilling that into my head)
- Bottled water
- A vehicle with good traction control
- Having the common sense to stop driving
- Snow plows
- A SOFT WARM BED