Well this posting is a little later than I’d planned.

As I sit and weep gaze in disgust upon the new foot and a half of new snow that was rudely deposited upon us over the past few days, I can only sigh in resignation. It’s supposed to be back in the 70s in a few days so hopefully it will melt off quickly!

Having company that arrived on Friday (in the form of parental units), I thought that it would be nice to show them around, right?

Yeah.

Saturday, May 9th arrived. Checking the weather, instead of the 60s and 70s and the beautiful sunny skies that one would expect here, I observed with a highly-arched eyebrow that it was to be…38 degrees, with about 20″ of snow, starting in the evening. Since no one from the Funt family popped out from the shed giggling and yelling “Smile!”, I had to assume it was real.

SH**! If we’re going to go see anything, we’d better do it now! 

Plans of leisurely picnics in the sunshine with the birds twittering in the background fizzled and wilted. Hustling my parental units out the door and piling into Hhrbie, with a hurriedly concocted Plan B, off we set!

We made it halfway around the Wildlife Loop, a feature of the park out here – about 35 miles or so from home.  We oohhhed and ahhhed at the deer, the wild turkey, and we cackled at the amorous, slightly inappropriate pronghorn. We found baby burros. It was pretty normal…except for the snow. Bison, just as irritated as we were, hurried determinedly across the road with their adorable, orange teeny babies in tow.

It was going well. We almost made it back out of the Loop. However due to an elevation change and the storm’s direction, the road deteriorated from simply wet to really ridiculous within a matter of minutes and 5-7 miles. Snow quickly peppered over the earlier rain, leaving the winding downhill grade extremely treacherous. We couldn’t turn around because to make it back up the steep grade would be Mission Impossible. We had no choice but to press forward. Even at a mere literal 2-3 mph, Hhrbie began skidding down the grade unable to stop. It was that bad. Hhrbie squeaked in pain as his various cushions were suddenly enveloped in death-grips, but he did his best to stop. He finally came to rest somewhat on the edge of a drain culvert-ditch on the opposite side of the road, just short of going over.

Four sets of hands finally loosed their various grips on Hhrbie’s interior parts. Sighs of relief from all fogged the windows.

3 of Hhrbie’s tires remained on the pavement and one sat on the shoulder, but the road was so slippery we couldn’t get any traction with those 3 tires even to just bump that shoulder tire back over the inch or two lip back onto the pavement. We were effectively stuck. Snow was pelting down. I entertained unpleasant visions of all of us spending the next few days in Hhrbie, perched on the shoulder if we didn’t get out of there soon!

2-3 also-slithering pickups and 4 helpful gentlemen later, Hhrbie was very appreciatively pushed backwards a few feet and we were able to resume our literal 2 mph cushion-clutch-crawl down the grade. The 4-WD truck behind us, one of the ones who had slithered to a halt to help, had also been running the Wildlife Loop and they were also marveling at the terrible sudden road change, saying they also slid down the grade! We were told of accidents involving an RV towing a car and others up ahead. We chose the most straight-forward route out and headed that way, hoping we could still make it out.

The road became so terrible that we couldn’t even make it up a milder hill without struggle. Hhrbie would spin until we weren’t moving forward any longer. I’d have to stop, inch backwards a few feet, put him in low and then I could gain a foot forward using momentum and our tire tracks…until Hhrbie would again spin to a halt. Then I’d back up a few feet, put him in low and gain another foot. Next to me, I could feel the whoosh of air and hear the soft, meaty thuds from hands stressfully rushing up to slap over eyes and faces, which made up for the more silent shrieks of my passengers, but I could see all. Finally we got up the hill! As I’ve written before, Hhrbie is a pretty plucky little guy.

 The windshield wipers iced up to where they were ineffective. I pulled over on a level stretch of road, stopped, broke the ice off and then slathered hand sanitizer gel all over the blades; this kept the wipers mostly ice-free after that.

It was a white-knuckle trip all the way back – and I do this kind of thing for a living. I knew if I made any errors, we wouldn’t make it back that night. No pressure or anything!

Finally arriving back at home, we all changed our shorts and hot soup was consumed. I felt a bit ill and very drained so I headed for bed fairly early. I wish we’d had more pictures of things, but none of us were really caring about pictures at that time 😉