onward

On my drive from Gone West to my sister's place in Mountain State, I drove through five winter storm warnings in three days. And thanks to the winter storms, the drive took three days when it should have taken two. 

The morning of the third day, the highway was closed. Closed. The highway. The interstate. The major east-west thoroughfare through the middle of the country. 

I despaired of ever making it to my sister's house.

But then, 'round 10 am, they re-opened the interstate, and I made a break for it.

Not long before I left Gone West, I drove out along the river to the east on a very windy day. It was so windy that I thought there was something wrong with my car, but there was not. The only thing wrong was the wind. 

This experience served me well in the State of Wild Horses. The wind was coming from the west, so on most parts of my eastward drive on the interstate it wasn't bad, save for some gusts, but when I turned south, I had to hold my steering wheel to the right to stay straight on the road. I drove 100 miles that way, on a road that got progressively smaller and smaller as I drove into Mountain State. Like the highway, the road was clear in patches just large enough to fool me into accelerating, only to suddenly be blocked by drifts of snow or patches of ice. 

It was nerve-wracking. I was relieved to finally pull into my sister's driveway (it took two tries to get in between the snowbanks). She had a warm dinner waiting, and my long puffy coat from the Big Apple. 

After gorging myself (I'd barely eaten all day, due to trying to stay on the road), we all bundled up for Ski Town's winter celebration. It involved kids doing ski jumps in the dark carrying flares, as one does. It also involved a man skiing down a mountain in the dark with fireworks shooting out of his head, and then a whole lot of (normally lit) beautiful fireworks reflected on the snow.

It felt worth the drive.