"I'll be home for Christmas"... maybe

As neither Dave nor I had been to Spokane in over 2 years we were rather excited as our journey began. Along the way, however, we began to doubt as to whether or not 2 years would extend a little longer: We flew from Cedar Rapids, Iowa to Chicago; then Chicago to Seattle; and then everything fell apart. The Seattle airport just shut down. Hundreds of people were stranded and with every hotel and rental car in the area taken the airport was a miserable mess. Women tried to help their tired and hungry little children curl up in her lap and fall asleep - with little success, and we even saw a few people with their dogs - yeah, I don't know how they handled it. Around 2am people were just staking out corners and chairs of the airport and covering themselves with what meager supplies they had in their carry-on luggage. Fortunately I brought on the plane my baby quilt project (for Emily) and so Dave and I were able to form a pathetic tent. In an attempt to escape the never-dimmed bright lights, never turned-off televisions, and incessant airport announcements, we built our shelter away and near a window - bad idea - we froze. After less than 2 hours of sleep with our coats under us and some extra clothes covering us, we awoke to see what the new dawn brought...and it was absolutely nothing. The lines to speak with a representative were still winding around the airport, and the very first flights were already being canceled. That was our cue - we couldn't rely on the airport.


Some how my amazing Dad did manage to find what was perhaps the last rental car in Seattle - a mid-size Chevy Malabo - and we began our trip to Spokane. All the stores in Seattle were sold out of chains, so we had to go without. The mountain passes were closed, so instead of a 5 hour drive through the mountains, our journey ended up being 17 hours of going around the mountains, down to Portland and back up. Portland airport was also closed, so no use stopping there. The freeway back up to Spokane was shut down after Portland, but our GPS system informed us of a back road alternate. After that 1 1/2 hour detour we were stopped by a cop before we went over another mountain pass and informed we could not continue without chains. We turned around and after a 3 hour ordeal we finally found some in a tiny town. By then it was dark and a blizzard had blown in. At first we decided to just stop for the night at a hotel and continue in the morning, but when we reached the cop and he said, "Well...I see you've got chains, and we haven't officially closed the pass yet...alright, you can still go" we realized if we waited until morning the pass would be closed and we would be spending Christmas in a hotel.
That began one of the scariest nights of our life. We crawled over the mountain pass, no one was going in our direction, so we had no tracks to follow, a cliff to the right of us, and swirling snow so thick we frequently had to completely stop until it lifted from the car. After an hour of this we reached the bottom and saw on our GPS that we were about to reach a freeway! Hurray! Other cars, civilization, safer roads...uh? Instead we found 2 feet of untouched snow on a freeway where no one had driven all day - how were we supposed to know it was shut down. We were all alone. We couldn't turn around and go back over the pass, and we couldn't just stay were we were. There were no signs to indicate a town anywhere near. So we just went forward. For about 3 hours no one spoke, no one slept, nothing but staring straight ahead into nothingness, with not a soul in sight, not even an off ramp. When we did get closer to civilization, there were cars off in snow drifts, flipped around, and even one flipped on its hood and heading in the wrong directions. I'll sum it up by saying we arrived home at 3:30am Monday morning after departing 10am Sunday morning. It was an experience I hope to never have to repeat - EVER!
Once we got to Spokane we were in no hurry to leave the house, which was convenient, what with 72 inches of snow we didn't have much of a chance.

Knowing what kind of good night sleep we had had two nights in a row, my mom and sisters made sure we came home to the epitome of comfort. This is the bedroom we were presented to sleep in when we arrived; Complete with strung white lights and gourmets candy dish. It was the most beautiful room I had ever seen. I almost cried just to lie down on a real bed.




After that Christmas was just fun and relaxing.




And really, it was all worth it just to come home and see this...
72 inches of snow does have it perks.