Oh My......

Hope you have a cup of coffee or tea....this is gonna take a while:)

Last time I wrote I was sitting on Peter's sofa waiting to go to his friend Coulter's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Was marvelous BTW - over 15 people for dinner, was good to meet some of his friends. The rest of our weekend was great - Friday the plan was to go ski-ing, but there was no snow. Instead we went to a bar - Harpo's - and watched the Colorado game all afternoon. they lost.

Saturday we got up late and then went into Denver. The plan was to visit the ESPN Zone and then meet up with my friends Sanya and Jeff. And that's what we did....have a fabulous time with lunch at The Market, an afternoon at ESPN Zone and then dinner at the Samba Room. It was great.

Our Pics http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=fb46ui1.4bl3on3l&x=0&y=-uds9x5

Then Sunday came...and the fun started. We set of OK before 9am for our 12 hour trek home. The first two hours were fine driving through Colorado - I managed to get behind a guy with a radar detector and drove at 90 through a lot of the state. Then.....

We noticed there was some blowing snow.....then we noticed it was a bit more than that......then we had to slow down to 20 miles an hour....then we really realized that things were mighty serious. We drove about 30 miles in 2 hours....and drove past cars and cars sliding off the road. Check out the link above to see the snow....very very scary.

Thankfully we had the forethought to call our friends Paul and BJ and have them call ahead and book us a hotel room. A good job we did - by the time we got to Goodland, Kansas (translation: middle of flipping nowhere) there were rows and rows and rows of cars and people with nowhere to sleep. The weather was horrendous - Trev and I split the crappy driving and Rach didn't even want to sit in the front seat. I went into the reception to check in...and there was probably 150 people all queued up. The reason was that the power was off and they couldn't get into the reservation system.

Luckily, the power came on within about 20 mins - and then they let the people with reservations queue separately. YIPPEE! so, we managed to get into our hotel room - we ventured out a mile to Pizza Hut - so scary i wish we'd never gone. However, glad we did - it tasted so good. That was last (Sunday) night. We went to sleep......ith the plan to leave in the morning.......

.....and woke up with icicles on our noses...the power had gone out again. Not only that the department of transport closed the Interstate highway.

The power didn't come on again ALL FREAKING DAY. It was soooooo cold. Imagine - twin room, 3 of us stuck in a single bed all with 3 layers of clothes on just to stay warm. We slept the morning away.....then Trev and I ventured out in the car to Walmart down the street. The power wasn't on so all they could offer was hot chocolate and donuts....nothing to sniff at - it was so welcome. After about an hour the power came on long enough for us to run round the store and pick up some fruit, ham, bread, peanut butter, jam, lemon curd, crisps, mayo, tea etc (yeah yeah, we got a LOT of food). We got back and ate a sarni and then Trev and I disappeared to the car for a couple of hours - we had borrowed a DVD player from our friends, Pete and Diane, so we sat and watched (with the engine running) Batman Begins. Good movie. And we had the heat on...with the hot seats. Very very welcome.

Bear in mind that someone had to be in the hotel room at all times as the room keys needed electricity to work:)

By about 7 we were going stir crazy so Trev and Rach decided to head out to find some food. They found that the reception guys would let us into the room if we left so we all headed out to the only restaurant in town with food left (did I say this was the middle of nowhere). Trev and I both ordered steak..........it was fabulous. I have never loved food so much as then....

The best thing - we got back to the hotel and the power is on. So we're wide awake as we had nothing to do all day other than sleep and i can write this update.

We're still 606 miles from home....not able to work....Rach has school stuff to do....Trev and I have work etc. But hey - the I70 still has 435 miles closed between Denver and east of Kansas. We're watching the news and hoping that they'll open the highway tomorrow.

if not....then we're stuck in Goodland, Kansas for a 3rd day.

Will keep you posted. We will only travel if safe. We're thankful we got here in one piece - and ever thankful to Paul and BJ for getting us a place to stay.

Love you all!