END OF THE WORLD BLIZZARD

I see that the December 21st arrived, and contrary to what the Mayans have foretold, we are still here.  Craig and I have been dealing with trying to deliver a load of frozen fries in a blizzard.  We thought we had avoided the bullet on Wednesday, when we received the load and headed to Warden, WA to the Columbia Cold Storage.  On our way, we ran into quite a bit of snow falling down, making it look very much like a winter wonderland.

Glad to have over 43,000 pounds of weight added to our trailer, we headed south, and as we had Pasco, WA in our sights, two things happened.  One, the snow stopped and we had bare pavement and clear skies, and two, the reefer stopped running.  We were in the perfect place to call road service and have them give us the go ahead to drive straight to one of our repair shops not more than a mile away.  Two hours later, the broken wire found on the reefer unit had been replaced, and we were once again headed south.

We hit Hwy 97 at Biggs Junction, OR and managed to drive a dozen more miles to a deserted weigh station, where we called it a day.  Waking to clear skies had my hopes high that we could possibly avoid any snow, but one look at the weather radar and we both knew that we would be facing a huge storm face to face.

The road between Bend and Klammath Falls was the usual winter snow packed road with a light snowfall.  Between Klammath Falls, OR and Grass Lake, CA the roads were bare and dry, and then, about 4 miles from Weed, all hell broke loose.  We had wind gusts up to 50 MPH and the the snow started falling.  Looking at the weather sites, the storm had been declared a blizzard, and Craig quickly pulled over to start putting chains on.

Every indication on the Internet had the roads still open going south, although they were completely shutting down traffic heading North from Redding and even up into Oregon on the summit, Grants Pass, and Canyonville area.  It was an anxiety filled ride for me, as I watched Craig do his best winter driving and try to avoid all the passenger cars on the road that were spinning out and sliding sideways.  We managed to get to the Lakehead Rest Area at mile marker 702 where we pulled into an open spot and decided to call it a night.  We only had about 90 minutes left on his driving clock and knew we would have issues finding something further down the road.

Awaking this morning to our snow covered truck, we took survey of our surroundings, checked the Internet, and was even able to talk to a CHP officer that was driving through the rest area.  We slowly took off, only to be stopped at a chain inspection area, where we were told a big rig had spun out near the bridge and that truck traffic would not be allowed through for at least a couple of hours.  With that we pulled off to the side of the road and presently await word on when we will be allowed through.  We know from looking at the radar, that we only have about 15 miles to go to hit rain and be out of the snow........at least for today