Me
Middle-of-Nowhere, Colorado
November 27, 2005
Our Thanksgiving travel adventure took another bizarre turn yesterday. As you may recall from my last post, our car was totalled when someone drove into us in Dallas last week. My parents offered to drive Mike and me back to Colorado, even though they live in Virginia. For those who aren’t familiar with US geography, Colorado is nowhere near Virginia. My parents are saints.
On Sunday, we had the brilliant idea to avoid a possible snowstorm by driving the Colorado backroads instead of the New Mexico interstate.
Now guess where the snowstorm decided to hit. I’ll give you a hint… it wasn’t New Mexico.
The snow fell in huge chunks, and the roads were terrible. Winds approached 60mph. There was no visibility from all the snow blowing horizontally. It was whiteout everywhere. We made it to the tiny, one-truck-stop town of Springfield, CO, and learned that all the roads out of the town were closed. We were stuck.
We were really lucky to book one of the last available motel rooms in town. We got in the room at 2pm, and had to occupy ourselves until we got back on the roads at 6:45am the next day. There was a restaurant one block away, so we joined dozens of other stranded holiday travelers for burgers and chili. The meal was pleasant, but walking back to the motel was dreadful. We had to walk into the wind, and that icy snow struck our faces like thousands of pins and needles. I could barely breathe.
We got up early this morning and got Mike to work by eleven. I tell ya, that guy can’t get a break. In the last seven days, he has been sick with the flu, got in a car accident, suffered an eye and head injury, went to the hospital, had to socialize with a dozen in-laws while aching and semi-blind, and then got stranded in a blizzard. And after all that, he actually got in trouble for being late to work.
Oh well, we’re home safely. My car is still in Texas, but the rest of us are doing just fine.
Here are some pictures from our snowbound motel
