A Year Ago Today...December 30th

We were up bright and early on Day 3 and ready to hit the road. We were a little nervous that the snow from the night before had closed I-40, but thankfully the storm wasn't too bad.

The following video was shot by Carl the morning of Day 3. I will caution you that he swears in the video but it's funny. Also, please notice the severe ADD my husband is suffering from.

I am pretty sure that the following picture was taken just before leaving Oklahoma. I had seen these on TV and movies, but was really awe struck to see them in person especially with the morning fog. Kind of eerie.

By mid-morning we crossed into Texas. 

Carl and I were making great time and enjoying our time together. Prior to this trip, we couldn't remember the last time we'd spent so much alone time together (other than our honeymoon). I had been working 2 jobs in Pennsylvania while Carl attended school full time. After he graduated he spent some time working and we rarely saw each other for more than an hour a day.  We didn't even get on each others nerves.... except when Carl suggested we stop at an I-Hop for lunch and I passed the exit ramp and refused  to turn around. Oops!

We were pleasantly surprised to find that the Welcome to New Mexico state sign was located at a rest stop and that we were able to get out and actually get our picture in front of it. I wish that all the state signs had been like this.

It was at this rest stop that we heard that there was a HUGE snow storm headed our way. The attendant said that it was going to hit Albuquerque, NM within a few hours...so we got back on the road to try to make it to our destination before it hit. 

There were only  a few things that we really wanted to stop and see on our trip across the country. Thankfully,  we had made such good time that we took a detour off I-40 and onto Historic Route 66 to snap a few photo's at lunch time. 

Shortly after getting back onto I-40 something changed  in the sky. It is so flat out there that we could see for miles ahead of us. What we saw was a wall of gray. We thought it was a rain storm but boy were we wrong! Carl also shot this video and again he let's a few curse words fly. You may not be able to tell how bad it really is from the video but we are driving at about 5 miles per hour and we are driving in the tracks left by the 18-wheeler ahead of us. Also note that most of this road is at a down hill angle. All of the exit and on ramps are covered in snow and there was no where to go but straight. 

Thankfully we were 9 miles from our destination when we hit the storm. Our exit happened to be the only  clear ramp during that 9 mile stretch and it looked like everyone was getting off at it. We pulled into the first hotel off the ramp and thankfully they still had rooms available. 

Note that as we headed West we stayed at increasingly cheaper and cheaper hotels. Our room  this night cost a grand total of $35! It was pretty gross and I refused to shower in the icky bathroom...I didn't even want to sit on the icky toilet but there wasn't much I could do about it.  However, Carl and I both got the best nights sleep in that bed for some reason and felt very revived the next morning.  

We walked down the street to a KFC and grabbed a bite to eat. When we got back to the hotel the snow was really coming down and the people were talking about I-40 being shut down. When we went to get our clothes and things from the car we realized that one of the space bags that we had packed had "exploded" and expanded making it very difficult to fit in the car. Did I mention that our car was so packed full of stuff that we couldn't see out the rear view mirror? 

Carl did drive for a portion of Day 3 and we managed to cover 560 miles and were well ahead of schedule. We had been averaging about 9-10 hours of driving each day and we still felt pretty good. 

Come back tomorrow for another edition of A Year Ago Today to see if we make it out of the snow!