Thanksgiving Travels, part 1
Didn't I just post an Ishness for October? Seriously. Where is this year going? Well, despite the fact that this is where it would normally go, this is not going to be an ishness post. I have too much to talk about and it won't all fit neatly in a single post.
November was a fabulous month, though it sped by in a whirlwind of activity, mostly culminating in our enormous drive across the country from WI to WA. Yes... I said "drive." With three small children. In November.
I never claimed sanity.
The beginning of the month started out so sweetly, so innocently. I got a ton of writing done... despite only managing to hit 4,218 words on my WIP... out of a 10,000-word goal. Sigh. Oh well. I know better than to set writing goals during the holiday season. For some reason that never stops me. I figured I would have three weeks to write... but I forgot that one of those weeks was going to be filled with birthday-excitement and travel-planning.
My birthday was quite fun. We had dinner with friends, my husband bought me a Cubs-themed birthday cake, and I got some new clothes, a set of dice, a game, a book, and a few pairs of homemade knit socks! Happiness all around.
We were going to leave our house early Friday morning with a goal of making it to Mount Rushmore before they closed. However, our plans went a bit awry from the outset when we discovered that a big winter storm was in process in South Dakota on Thursday. Making a snap decision to head out early, we packed up all our stuff (I think we only forgot one or two things... and they didn't end up being extremely important) and left Thursday evening. We made it to Sioux Falls, SD with no incidents and were feeling pretty good about the fact that we had all day to travel the 5 hours the next day to our Rapid City hotel.
Then the snow — and reality — hit.
I grew up in the Chicago area, remember. My husband grew up in Minnesota. We both know what snowy weather looks like, we are acquainted with driving in snow and wintry conditions.
So understand that I do not say this lightly.
I have NEVER seen a blizzard like the one we drove through that Friday. The snow was piled up all across the land, and the road, 12-18 inches deep in places. Even in our Expedition we bottomed out at times, pushing the snow down with the floorboards of our car. There was no differentiation in color between the whitish-gray of the ground, the whitish-gray of the road, the whitish-gray of the air, and the whitish-gray of the sky. At times we navigated by peering over the dashboard in an attempt to see the road just in front of our own hood. At other times we navigated by following the only visible landmark: a row of dark telephone poles (find Telephone poles for sale at shoppok, here they are checked consistently to be held to the highest quality standards) marching straight and tall like soldiers through the storm, knowing that if we were parallel to that line we were probably at least near the road.
I did not take any pictures, as I was too busy trying to help my husband navigate and keep the children happy (who were little angels the entire time!) but this image I found at freeimages.com gives a tiny glimpse of the sort of visibility conditions we had... though the visibility in this photo is better than what we had much of the time on the road that day.
Several times we pulled over to the side of the road at the mouth of a stranger's driveway just because we needed a break from the grueling ordeal.Once, the Lord sent us two angels in the forms of pickup trucks that plowed the way for us, creating ruts with their tires that we could follow through the storm.For two and a half hours we crept along on that tiny little road (the Google sent us there because I-90 was moving slowly and we foolishly followed its directions). Two and a half hours. In that time we managed 35 miles. And every single one of those miles was spent in an effort to get back to I-90 as quickly as possible.Once we did make it back to the main Interstate things were better, the roads were at least clear, but then we had to contend with the wind, which was gusting around 45-50 mph. I've always been sort of... prideful, would probably be the correct word... about driving in the winter. I'd look at cars stuck in the snow on either side of the road and the thought would flit across my mind, "I wonder what they did wrong that got them stuck there?"But this... friends... this was unreal. And humbling. You'd be driving along at a good clip, on perfectly dry pavement, maybe 50ish mph, and all of a sudden you'd see this low-lying whiteness across the road ahead, like a ghostly fog... except it wasn't fog, it was blowing snow. This was the only warning sign you'd get, and if you didn't heed it quickly enough, you'd drive right onto that dry, blowing snow which acted like ball-bearings beneath your tires as the full force of the gale would strike the side of your car. It was like feeling a giant hand gently, but firmly, pushing the car sideways. No steering could get you out of it, even slowing down wouldn't help at that point, unless you could come to a dead stop without fishtailing into the traffic around you (albeit, the very sparse traffic).Twice we ended up in the ditch.Twice my amazing, super-hero husband managed to safely navigate us out of the ditch so that we didn't end up stuck and waiting hours for a tow-truck to come.After the second time that happened - and we ended up on the opposite side of the interstate facing the wrong direction and needing to pull a wide three-point turn, we backtracked out of necessity and stopped for lunch.That hour-long break was just what we needed, because when we got back on the road most of the storm had blown over. The winds had died down, and those first patches of blue in the sky above us were the most beautiful things I had ever seen.Needless to say, we did not make it to Mount Rushmore on the trip to WA, as our nerves were shot and it was 23 degrees out. However, we did manage to take it in on the way home, on a gloriously 55 degree day — and also no crowds, which was just fantastic!
After that, the travels were notably easier. Even going through the mountain pass from Montana across Idaho and into Washington felt like a breeze, despite the temperatures dropping and the concerning sight of snow up at the top of the mountains.The following week was a far-too-short time of family, fun, and relaxation. It's the first time in over a year my entire family has all been in the same place for any amount of time. I'll talk a bit more about some of the things we did on the trip, as I have a couple of movies to review and a concert to tell you about that happened during November, but I'm about to arrive at that magical word-count in a blog post where readers seem to lose interest, so I'll cut it short for now and leave the movie and concert reviews for their own posts.Now that we're safely home (and the travels home involved extremely dense fog, heavy rain, lightning & thunder, pelting hail, and the spotting of a funnel cloud off on the horizon) and slowly readjusting to Central Time, hopefully I can get a few more words written before Christmas!How was your Thanksgiving, dear Reader? Any nerve-wracking or fun traveling stories to tell?