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Mega storm 2009

Road trips always hold a fascination for me. I love the adventure of hitting the open road. It is always interesting. Last winter my husband Larry and I loaded up the Subaru until it was overfilled with luggage, the dog and gifts and set out for the Midwest. We had grand beautiful weather through Montana. So nice that it was easy to forget it was mid December. We drove on to Chamberlain, where we found a hotel. Just as we were pulling into the hotel, it started with a freezing rain. So slippery that we couldn’t walk very well on the sidewalks, to go and get some supper at the local Subway. Country music was playing and many of the big semi trucks were rumbling in and parking for the evening by the hotel. We were just glad that for once we had sense to stop early for the evening, as the evening weather forecasts were giving warnings of black ice and slippery conditions.
Sleeping in for the morning, Larry and I had breakfast and got on the road. Now it is a long drive to Minnesota and the icy roads just made it all the slower. We hit the edge of Minnesota just as it was getting to be late in the afternoon. We noticed all the construction in Fargo/Moorhead from all of the flood damage from the Red River and got lost in the tangle of roads looking for a McDonalds.
We pulled into Mom and Dad’s in the evening and we were tired from driving. We were visiting my brother, when we first heard about the big storm heading for us. Living in snow country all our lives we didn’t really worry about it too much, but it did sound impressive. They were calling for enough snow to shut down the metro area and it was supposed to be hitting on Christmas. We had a few days though, so we enjoyed ourselves and took a trip to the Mall of America with the nephews. We did a little last minute shopping and entertained ourselves at the aquarium.
When the snow finally hit, it impressive. Big quarter sized flakes starting piling on the car as we attended the Christmas Eve service at the Catholic church. It was covering everyone’s hair and it was beautiful with the Christmas lights glowing in the fresh snow. Piling back in the car, we went back to the house and watched it snow and snow and snow. It was a good thing we had a lot of food and beverages, because when it did stop snowing two days later, it was impossible to get the snow plowed. We enjoyed lot of family time. The Twin Cities was shut down. We weren’t going anywhere. My brother’s plow on the tractor couldn’t move the snow. He had to snowmobile over to his father-in-law’s farm and get the big tractor and plow. Even then it took a long time to plow out the driveway
When we finally left to head to Iowa, it was impressive looking at the walls of snow along the interstate. It was four days after the storm, and cars were still not all pulled out of the freeway. Cars littered the sides of the road all the way down. They were buried in drifts and stuck in the barrow pit.

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