Fiber Dreams

It seems like years since I posted in my blog. But you see, we were out of town all last week. Just got back yesterday afternoon. We were so exhausted from driving more than a thousand miles in two days (actually 1,086 miles/1,749 kilometers), that we were in bed and asleep before 9 pm.

I seem to be getting a bit ahead of myself. Let me back up a bit.

As you know, our anniversary is the middle of November. For the last four years we’ve gone to our timeshare in Las Vegas to celebrate by sitting on our butts, reading, cooking, eating, knitting (me), stitching (again, me), and watching movies. Not necessarily in that order. When we called to make reservations this year they were already booked. Not a single room was available. Hrmph. We moped around the house for a few days, feeling miserable.

Then an amazing thing happened. An old friend of Dave’s from when he lived in Ogden, Utah called up to make sure we were still in one piece, and hadn’t been burned out by the fires raging through southern California. Wasn’t that nice? While we were on the phone with Charlie he must have invited us up to stay with them in their new home in Montana about a dozen times. After we got off the phone with Charlie we talked about how nice it was of him to call (voluntarily picking up the phone, much less dialing it, is not something Charlie is known for) the possibility of going up to visit them for Thanksgiving. We called back the next day, and they were totally excited about the idea. Exact dates were chosen. Plans were made. The car was packed. On Sunday, November 18, we headed north.

Though unable previously to get a room at the Las Vegas timeshare, we were however able to get a room for a single night at the Cedar Breaks resort in Brian Head, Utah. After driving approximately 465 miles on Sunday, that is where we spent the night.

I don’t know how much you know about Brian Head, but it’s a ski resort up in the southern Utah mountains. It was only a few days before Thanksgiving, and they had no snow. None. Not a single flake. Obviously, the resort staff were more than a little down about that, especially since there was no snow in the forecast. Though beautiful, this is the snow-less landscape that we saw outside our suite windows.

On a personal note, we weren’t at all upset that there wasn’t any snow yet. It’s lack made driving up the mountain a lot easier. You wouldn’t believe the switchbacks!

Have you ever been on a road trip in the U.S.? I don’t necessarily mean one where you drive a couple hundred miles. I mean a real road trip, where you drive a thousand miles or more. Have you? I’ve been on one other long road trip; a number of years ago Dave and I drove from here to Des Moines in western Iowa. Des Moines is, by one route, 1,600 miles from our house here in southern California. Now we’ve driven up to southern Montana, a stone’s throw from Yellowstone in Wyoming, and a hair above Idaho. You know something? The United States is a huge country. You really start to get a feel for the size of this place when you get in a car and try to drive around in it. When we drive across Nevada especially, we get to talking about how brave the settlers were. It’s exhausting to drive a thousand miles in two days. I can’t even imagine going that far on horseback or in a covered wagon. Or on foot, as so many people did. They were beyond brave. Don’t even get me started about how huge the Mojave Desert is. Ride a horse across it? Walk across it? No thank you.

On Monday morning we took off at some ungodly hour. We’d woken up at 3:30, and neither of us could get back to sleep, so we packed up the few things we’d brought into the room, checked out, and resumed our northward trek.

I had to take this picture at a rest stop in northern Utah. No vending? But… Cracked me up.

As we progressed, the outside temps went down a bit. Hm. Quite a bit over the day before. It was in the low 80s (27°C) as we drove through the desert in California and Nevada on Sunday. It was closer to 40°F (4°C) even in the middle of the day in Utah, and cooler yet the farther north we went. No snow anywhere, though. Not for a long time, anyway. Finally, off in the distance, the mountains started showing a bit of the white stuff.

Until we were about an hour from Charlie and Cherrie’s (read: Sherry) house. We’d been on the phone with them not half an hour earlier. Poor Cherrie was all worried because it was evidently really coming down at their house. Really? Hm. Well, we found out, right enough.

We rounded a bend in the road, and saw where we were headed. It was quite clear. There was a huge, dark cloud laying over the entrance to a valley, blanketing it. It was snowing ahead.

Most people have lived with at least some snow at some time or other in their lives. At least, it seems like that to me. I never have. Even the times I’ve gone skiing, if there happened to be snow on the road, someone else was at the wheel. I’d learned the basics, naturally, in school. But how much can you really learn about driving in snow from a book?

Evidently, more than I thought.

I did pretty well, all things considered. First off, I’d been driving for about nine hours already. I’d been up and out of bed since 3:30 in the morning, and awake longer than that. I was tired. I was more than a little scared, as I’d never done this before. And I had to pee. Bad. Between taking pictures, and even then, Dave was great. Said I was doing well; keep going, you’re doing fine, Laura. No sudden moves. No sudden breaking or acceleration. Slow and easy. It was lucky that I was following a semi. He had nice wide tires, and broke a good trail for me to follow.

I just knew that if I managed to drive off the road or plow into an oncoming car that the very first thing that to happen would be that my bladder would burst. Absolutely burst. It was that full.

Finally we made it to the town where they live. Actually, Charlie and Cherrie don’t live in town. They live ten miles outside of town. We were to let them know when we made it to the gas station in town. I parked the car in front of the station’s store, grabbed my sweater, and ran inside wearing only my tank top, jeans, and flats with holes in the soles, raced across the store and into the ladies’. What a relief!

Anyway, it wasn’t long before Charlie pulled up. I started to hand the keys to Dave so that he could drive the rest of the way to their house, but he said I’d done fine so far (I guess so!), and that I should just continue. Okay. I, uh, I guess. Okay. I’ll do it. Hrmph. Should have listed to myself. At first, though, it was fine. Charlie was a great leader. Paid close attention to where I was, signaled at turns, braked a little warning when slowing or stopping was in order. All was going fine until we were about a mile from their house and reached the slope. It’s a steep(ish) slope that without snow I would have maneuvered just fine. Not a problem. But with snow, well, we were going slow enough that I needed to down-shift from second gear to first so that the engine wouldn’t stall. Not knowing that there’s a “technique” to doing that in the snow, I went about it in my usual manner, and proceeded to get us good and stuck. Gads.

Charlie noticed right away that we had stopped making forward progress. He turned around and came back. We told him. He passed us, turned around again, and stopped behind us. He and Dave got out of the vehicles. Me, with my holey shoes that are good for driving and dashing in dry places and not so good for snow, I stayed in the car. First off, they both checked, rechecked, and checked again. Seems I do not have tow hooks at the front of my car. That would have been too easy. Nope. No hooks. But, we do own chains (well, cables) for my car, and so finally they came out of the trunk (they’d been packed in a spot where they were easy to get to!), and on the tires. Easier said than done. Finally, after much finagling, kneeling in the snow, and backing down a slippery slope so the chains could be properly affixed, we were ready. In the meantime I’d moved over to the passenger seat (easier said than done in a small car with bucket seats and a shift lever in the middle, I’m telling you) and refused to budge. Dave drove us carefully out of the ice, along the last mile, and up to the house and into the garage. Whew. We have arrived!

This entire thing was a lot more involved than it sounds here. I’ve intentionally left out the part where Dave tried to get us unstuck using rusty skills he hasn’t used in more than twenty years. And the bit where the snowplow honked at us, then later made us move the car (backwards, as that’s the only direction we could go at the time) to the other side of the road. No. We won’t even go into all that.

Obviously taken on a different day, these are pictures of the slope that conquered me during a blizzard. Doesn’t look so bad now.

While I was sitting there in the car, after I’d calmed down enough to think, I managed to take a couple of pictures of weeds in snow. I know. Lame. I thought they were quite pretty, though.

And this is how my poor little car looked a few days later when it was good and dry. Poor thing.

I think this is enough for now. If you made it this far, I congratulate you and thank you for your perseverance. I’ll continue the story later…

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