The trip that almost didn't happen...

Ok - So we were determined, insanely crazy and oblivious to the world! One of my BFF's from back in the day (High School) who lives 1.5 miles from me and kicks my butt as I drag my feet every morning to walk, and I decided that we needed a night away. Bless her, she has 3 kiddos that keep her busy, and you all know about my "throwing in the towel" and the need for time away.

So on a last minute whim, we planned a night away to Reno, NV. Which means from California we need to travel across the Sierra Mountains to get there. Which in normal weather is a 2 hour drive (if you drive like me, 1-1/2hr). But then this stupid thing called "Winter" happened, and some insane Snow Storm threatened to end our trip. That morning, I checked with Cal Trans road conditions, checked 3 weather reports, checked online road delays and then we decided "Heck, let's go as far as we can and if we have to turn around, at least we tried!". We were armed with LOTS of alcohol, food, warm clothes, good music, full tank of gas, great company, all-wheel drive and Starbucks!

After 30 minutes on the road, we came across this:

It was blowing directly at us. It was like we were driving into the abyss!

Then we hit the first chain control check point and we looked at each other and plowed thru. A little nervous, but little did we know this was going to be nothing compared to what we were about to hit.

We were making our way, passing all the Semi's pulled over putting on chains or parked because they had no chains. We kept it at 30 miles an hour and was making good headway when all of a sudden we hit a road block. Cars stopped on the highway. We figured they closed the road and we had gone as far as we could. We put the car in park and called our Hubbies to tell them we are OK and to see if they could look up online and see what the situation was on the highway. It turned out to be the Cal Tran's Snow Plow truck. He spun out and hit an embankment. Took 2 Flatbed Towtrucks and another snow plow to pull him out! The guy next to us suddenly got out of his truck and pulled this out to play: We talked about anything we could to keep my mind off the fact that it was now hour 4 since I drank that Starbucks and desperately need to PEE like no ones business! I mean I was seriously coming up with an alternate plan. We had a cliff on one side of us. A dozen cars on the other. No where to "squat" outside. I had my Starbucks cup, a back seat and turn the radio up loud as I was about to pee in the car! Just as I was about to unbuckle and crawl over the seat, we see brake lights go on and cars moving! Thank you Lord!

The next exit had a gas station/burger king (and that was it, in the middle of nowhere) so we pulled over so I could pee! We decided since it was snowing and we had such a long journey already, we better eat lunch while there. As we sat through the worst of the snow, it suddenly stopped and we saw blue Sky's! So we hurried up and started to head out. When I noticed in the gas station part they had these window scrappers for sale. I remembered my friend saying she didn't even have one to bring, and seeing as how we were following the storm thru the mountain, I suggested we might buy one. She agreed and THANK GAWD we did!!!

After Lunch, We hit the road and as we pulled onto the highway and were chatting away, I suddenly looked around and said "um...where are all the cars?" We were on a mountain pass, and we were alone. No car in either direction. No Cal Trans snow plows, no sand trucks, no trucks, no highway patrol, no cars, no one! We suddenly giggled, and then reality set in. Oh My Gawd! They closed the highway down and forgot to close our exit. And we are ALONE on this mountain pass! And they would only close the highway if the driving conditions due to the weather were BAD! So we kinda chuckled at ourselves for being crazy woman determined to have our one night alone and plowing thru a snowstorm. So we did what anyone would do. We stopped the car in the middle of the highway and got these amazing pictures!

Yes, that is the road in front of us. Yea, we couldn't tell where the lanes were either!

It was so beautiful. But we knew we needed to get going before conditions got worse. So off we go to continue our climb thru the mountains. The weather immediately turned nasty within 2 minutes. The snow, fog and ice were so bad we were now creeping along at 15 MPH. Ice was building up on our windshield wipers so thick and fast, we had to keep stopping every 15 minutes to chip the ice off them so we could see. THANK GAWD for that window scrapper we bought!

**stay tuned for Part 2**

XOXO