Happy New Year to everyone! Well, let me start out by updating the house before I detail the total insanity of our trip to Lake Tahoe for Christmas. The windows and siding are officially complete. The house is practically a new house (on the outside).
(I'll put some photos up tomorrow)
As for Tahoe... Oh
lordy, where to start?
So, we had planned to go to Tahoe for the Friday-to-Friday encompassing Christmas. My parents rented a house on the north end of the lake in King's Beach. It was a beautiful house, but I digress.
On the evening before our departure we found out our flight had been cancelled. When given the option of connecting through Denver or San Fransisco in December, pick San Fransisco.
Anywho, we finally got through to United reservations at 5:00 am Friday morning after deciding to sleep on it. The earliest flight they could get us on was Christmas Day arriving at Reno at around midnight. This would put us in Tahoe at about 2:00 am and we would have only had 3 days there. Not worth the cost of the tickets, we decided. Running out of options Jenni and I laid in bed for about a half hour before we both kind of suggested to drive to Tahoe. Dismissing it at first, we both just laid there and
finally I said... let's go.
I figured we could be in Nebraska by noon and we were already packed and ready to go! So we threw our stuff in the
Prius and headed for California! The trip out there wasn't terrible, but we did have our adventures. We tried to make Salt Lake City the first night but the road conditions in Western Wyoming were too icy and windy to make it, so we stopped in Rock Springs, WY for the night before heading to Salt Lake City in the morning. We stopped and got new tires in Salt Lake that morning and we were in Tahoe by dinner! Not too shabby.
As for the adventure along the way. I was trying to make one final stop for food and gas in Nevada and trying to do so where we wouldn't have to stop again before getting to Tahoe. However, the
Prius decided to run out of gas a mile and a half from the exit where we intended to fuel up in
Winnemucca, NV. The battery on the hybrid kicked in and got us to the off-ramp, where we proceeded to coast to the stop sign at the bottom. The sign there read 1.3 miles to the Shell station. NO WAY we'd make that, we thought. But, we turned and the
Prius gave all it had to make it up a small hill at 5 mph before crapping out at the top of the hill. Luckily there was a shady "
Gas'n'Go" or something or other there at the bottom of the hill and we were able to coast into the station on complete and utter EMPTY. We wouldn't have made it another 20 feet, as witnessed by Jenni's "should I get out and push" comment!
However, we made it to Tahoe and we made it in one piece.
Once there, we wined, dined, and skied our hearts out. Had a great Christmas dinner prepared by my mom and sister and and
everything went pretty well. Had a very good time.
On the last skiing day, however, my brother managed to split his head open on the last run of the day in a collision with a snowboarder (my brother's fault). When his ski snapped off and came up behind him and clipped him in the back of the head, the instant flowing of blood was a sure sign of a significant cut. I had him put his hat on and goggle band over the wound and ski straight to the lodge. There we got a close look at what turned out to be a semi-circle shaped gash that essentially was half of a scalping. A large flap of skin peeled back when I took a closer look and we got him right to the ski patrol medical services office.
Turns out the guy needed 17 staples and the results I will post on here tomorrow in picture form :-)
Driving back turned out to be the real adventure, however. Nothing like the adventures of my friend Alex who is now in Ecuador attempting to climb a 19,000+ foot mountain (yes, you read that correctly), but an adventure all the same.
We decided to drive along the edge of Yosemite and back through Death Valley and Vegas before stopping at the Grand Canyon on our way home via a more Southern route that would take us through Arizona, New Mexico and Texas before heading North. Everything went well up to Albuquerque, NM. As we approached Albuquerque we heard they had closed Interstate 40 heading East. However, as we got closer, we found a 1-800 number to call for road conditions that proclaimed I-40 had just been re-opened. This was at about 5:00 pm, so we figured all was well if they were opening the road right before sunset. As we pulled into Albuquerque, the road was a parking lot. We figured if worst came to worse we could head south through El
Paso, TX and over to Dallas. However, we used the
Prius navigation system to wind through Albuquerque and came out the other side on Old Route 66. This followed I-40 for a long ways and gave us a chance to look at traffic. After about 8-10 miles traffic opened up and we jumped onto the interstate. Yet, just 50 miles East of Albuquerque the authorities decided to close the interstate. What the hell? Did they not realize it was nearly night when they opened the road? What was the purpose of opening it just to trap 50 miles of vehicles on the road? INSANE!
So here we are at 7:30 at night, stopped on the HWY in the middle of nowhere at 7000 feet elevation. Luckily we had food, water and ski equipment to keep us warm and hydrated, but I'm sure there were other not as lucky. We were able to turn the car on for 10 minutes every couple of hours to warm up.
At about 2:00 in the morning people came by waking everyone up and making sure they could start their cars. They told us we were going to get moving again. So we started rolling on ice packed end-to-end at about 35 mph. Then, just 8-10 miles after we started up, they stopped us again! ARE YOU SERIOUS? Nobody ever came by to make sure everyone was
ok, warm, and had water. Here we sat without moving until nearly noon! 16 and a half hours of being stuck in the car, not moving, and not knowing when you would get moving again! REALLY!
Once the sun melted the snow and got us moving the next day, we were basically the only car on the road between there and Amarillo, TX. We had been very near the front of the line and once we got going and passed about 20 trucks and cars, we were home free!
From there we made it to Springfield, MO where we rang in the New Year with Steak & Shake and the ABC countdown that was already at 12 seconds to go by the time we got to our room and turned on the TV. No kidding. Stopping in St Louis to see Jenni's sister and then
Bloomington, IL to see my friend Mike and his family, we eventually ended up at home at about 10:00 pm and New Years Day... and yes, we both had to work the next day!
I'll post pictures of our crazy adventures tomorrow, but thought I had better tell the story before all the details blurred.
Hope your New Years was less chaotic than ours!
