January First near-disaster

So last week we came up with the bright idea of heading up to Idaho on New Year’s Day so that we could check out my brother-in-law’s new sleds (note: “sled” == “snowmobile”). He bought four, and three are in working condition. Apparently, they are pretty fast. Anyway, I wanted to just drive up there in my Insight (Hey, there and back again on a single tank of gas isn’t bad), but Christy impressed upon me the necessity of taking all the children with me if I went. She’s eight months pregnant, having fairly regular contractions, and did not want to worry about delivering a child while three other children panicked around her.

Well, the idea was sound, except for the fact that it decided to blizzard on our way up there. Sixty mile per hour crosswinds. Five to fifteen feet of visibility. Horrible stuff. We made it as far as Pocatello (at least an hour later in our trip than usual) before we took a break because they’d closed the freeway.

The freeway remained closed.

We waited three hours, then gave up, turned around, and headed back home. There was some negotiation on the phone with the in-laws about taking back roads until the manager of the Subway we were hanging out at, who lives on the aforementioned back road we would have used, informed us that there were three-to-four foot snowdrifts on that road. Practically impassable.

The options at that point were to rent a room, wait it out, or head home. I decided to head home. Scary trip back, really — the snow hadn’t gotten shallower behind us — but within twenty miles after Malad Pass was behind us (two hours after leaving the Subway when it normally takes about forty-five minutes), the snow slacked off to rain, then to nothing but wind for the last two hours of our trip home.

Talk about a wasted day. A wasted tank of gas. It basically turned out to be a nine-hour round trip to go eat out at Subway. At least my low-carb Turkey & Bacon wrap was good.

I was grateful that Elijah slept much of the way up and back since he was up very late last night. He was downright cordial when he was awake, too — an unusual state for this nearly-two-year-old tornado. The other kids entertained themselves on my wife’s old Palm M500, and my current one, playing Bejeweled. We liked that game enough to buy it, it rocks, and our kids really enjoy playing it.

So anyway, here it is, over nine hours after leaving the house to try to make what’s usually a four-hour trip, back at home. That’s just a bummer. But it beats wrecking ourselves in the middle-of-nowhere Idaho wilderness.