I'm still here

Well....... here on the web anyway...  But physically I am sitting in my recliner in Arizona...  And as usual, I was watching the weather up in KC when I determined that the storms were too close together to not be effected by one of them....

And, the cold weather was due to arrive on Saturday...  That meant I was leaving on Friday..  I packed up the car Thursday night after bidding the family so long...   I had gone to breakfast with my motorcycle buddies, that morning...  And perhaps I was a bit vague, but we did take Al's big Buick out there and enjoyed toasty inside conditions all the way...

I left the house at 10 AM and drove right along making the 570 mile trip to Tucumcari by about 8:30 PM...  But now being in Mountain Time zone, it was really only 7:30...  Kansas is long and tedious.. Especially in the winter...

The desk clerk, asked if I knew there was a forecast for snow....  And yes I did, know that, realizing that I had to cross the line of weather somewhere...  May as well be while I was sleeping....  Uh, in retrospect I should have kept on driving....

When it became light in the morning, I peeked out of the motel window, and was surprised to find about 10 inches of snow on the top roof of the Jeep.....  Which I had to remove with my gloved hand, since I no longer own a snow brush....  I packed rather quickly and headed out since with the snow, going would be a tad bit slow...

No one had left the motel when I forged the new path thru the un shovelled driveway in four wheel drive..  The roads weren't much better, as I met another Jeep who was spinning all four wheels as he made his way thru the un plowed city streets.... Then it dawned on me that I was also spinning all four wheels while following him....  And that there weren't any other cars on the road.......

Once on the interstate, which was somewhat plowed, but the road was hard packed and traffic was moving about 45 miles an hour...  It slowly improved as I worked my way along to Albuquerque.. Clines Corners, wasn't any trouble as the road was mostly slush by that time even though you are at 7800 feet in elevation there..   I was worried that I would have trouble during that stretch...

The rest of the trip was mostly uneventful...  The snow was gone on the west side of Albuquerque, but by then my Jeep wasn't white anymore..  There was snow on the sides of the road from the continental divide all the way to Payson, Arizona..  It wasn't until I descended below 3500 feet south of Payson that the snow disappeared...  Still it was barely 50 when I arrived here at the house..

So after 1150 miles in two days, I am back to the valley of the sun...  Where my sensitive Arizona bushes are all dead and shriveled in the back yard, due to the several nights of below freezing weather we had while I was back in Kansas...

Sunday, I never left the house....  Except to go about a mile to church in the morning.  Oh, and to the car wash to make the Jeep white again...

I do think the Jeep made it here without too much fanfare even thou it was less than stellar road conditions...  I would have probably made it in a more normal car, but not as quickly, as I would have had to wait for the roads to be plowed..  That probably wouldn't have hurt me any, other than my ego...  LOL

Retired Rod