Snowmaggedon 2011

Well, we've survived Snowmaggedon 2011. First inklings that our luck-o-meter as far as snow this winter was about to run out were over the weekend, when there was a "possible" winter event with 6-12 inches on Tuesday. The predictions became more definite and the predicted snowfall increased. Then the winter storm watch. Then Tuesday morning we were upgraded to a Blizzard warning starting at 5 p.m. that day.

We had an appointment with our financial planner at 5:15 - in the opposite direction of home. I dearly wanted to reschedule but Steve was equally interested in keeping the appointment as the snow wasn't going to get bad until later. 5 p.m., the roads were still clear as I headed to Grandville.

6:15 as we left, roads are getting a bit snowy, and the wind has definitely picked up. Steve cleared my windows before his (we came separately from work) It took us a lot longer to get home than usual. And there is a new definition of love - Steve followed me all the way even though I was only going 35-40 mph on the freeway. I know slow drivers drive him nuts so he must love me : )

Once home, we hunkered down for the night. Conditions quickly deteriorated over the evening. When I took Max out for the last time before bed, the paths in the yard were starting to drift over but we could still get through. After going to bed, I definitely heard thunder snow - quite unusual. Snow falling at about 2" an hour from what I've heard.

Woke up this morning to a phone call from my boss that I didn't have to come in (at 7:30 a.m.) Thanks anyway. I'm not scheduled for Wednesdays...anyway noticed that Steve was still here so discovered that he was snowblowing the driveway as there was no way the cars were going through. Very thankful for the John Deere with snowblower attachment - made things much easier for Steve. Opened the door to take Max out and that was as far as I got. Outside door wouldn't budge. BIG drifts. Went out through the garage and trudged through the snow to get back to the front door and shoveled it out, then went for Max. The path went above MY knees so you can imagine what it must have been like for him. Sorta like the Grand Canyon in snow form.

Kept shoveling after Max went in to clear the paths from the driveway to the doors - then in front of the garage doors where the snowblower couldn't reach well. After we were done, came inside and determined that Steve didn't have to work, either. So spent the morning watching TV (Steve) and catching up on bill paying (me.)

About 1 p.m., a knock on the door. Turned out to be my good geo-friend, Joe (aka Macho Homemaker.) He saw my facebook post about my geo-calendar day not looking likely due to the blizzard. Since he needed to keep his geo-streak going and his wife needed a ride to work in Ada, he came out to my place in his 4WD cachemobile. He needed some help on one of my nearby caches so the tradeoff was that he would take me to get a cache for my geo-calendar. Of course I jumped at the chance and we left for my cache. Going down Sargent was quite the experience - the only "path" was one car wide. I don't think my car would have made it. We got to my cache and after going through knee high drifts found the cache ok but buried.

Then off to the nearest chirp cache. Joe knew that I couldn't get chirp caches, which require a particular kind of GPSr that I don't have. So that was his plan and a good one. Main roads weren't too bad though once we got to the chirp stage the road was almost impassable. The 4WD came through ok and off we went to the final. Joe stayed in his car and watched as I made my way through snow and tree branches to find the cache. Broke the branch getting the cache out, then managed to empty a few branches worth of snow down my shirt putting it back. Then an uneventful trip back.

Spent the afternoon surfing the web, mostly travel sites again though I did do some research on geocaches along our proposed route. Caching will be a lot easier than two years ago as I wasn't paperless back then and am now. Steve went into town for an appointment and to check on his dad, and we spent a quiet evening.

Total snowfall around 16 inches. Tomorrow back to work, hoping things are somewhat back to normal.