He’s a Chicago guy and I’m a Pennsylvania girl, and we’re used to frigid cold weather and snow. However, I have never been so upset to see snow before as I was today. We bundled up, checked out of our hotel and loaded into our big moving truck (with car attached on a platform) and headed out of Denver, Colorado this morning at 8am. It was clear, almost sunny even, with just a little frost on our windshields.
Within 5 minutes of our drive, flurries start to fall.. no biggie. Within 10 minutes, traffic starts to build up and then we see an accident. Within 15 minutes, the snow is pounding down hard, blinding us. We start to see people get out of their cars and push them along the highway! By this time, all big trucks are stalled on the sides of the highway, with truckers whipping out their tire chains. At this point, Joe and I are praying and thinking “Lord God… please help us not have to USE the insurance we took out on this truck!”
Within 30 minutes, it becomes unbearable, Joe is sweating bullets, we’re starting to slide, and we have no choice but to pull off the highway and slowly turn into the nearest hotel, with me, window open, sticking my head out, blinking through the bleary snow to see where the entrance to the hotel is. It wasn’t until my face was about to fall off that I finally see “Hampton Inn.” Great… we HAVE to choose an expensive hotel don’t we?
We lounge around in the lobby waiting it out until we turn the lobby TV to the weather channel and soon realize that we’re not going anywhere today. We’re stuck. We’re currently in our expensive hotel room, waiting for the 2 feet of snow and whipping winds to come and pass by hopefully tomorrow morning.
The saddest part of this whole experience is that we are delayed one day behind schedule, lost money from our Vegas hotel reservation and have no access to food. I went to the front desk and they told us there was no food until breakfast, unless we go out and get something. Yeah right! So I went downstairs and scrounged up 2 packets of instant oatmeal they had leftover from their continental breakfast, along with bananas I happened to have, and we ate that for lunch. Dinner tonight will be from a vending machine… maybe some microwave burrito? Hopefully things will look better tomorrow as I’m looking forward to driving through the scenic routes of Utah and then Vegas before arriving at our new home in sunny California. Funny… I thought that I might actually miss the snow….
