Well, finally make it to OK to spend Christmas with my wife's family. To save money we decided to drive rather than fly as driving is about $2K less.
So, we leave Orange County at 1:30am on Saturday. The weather varied for much of the trip and the driving was easy.............until we hit Texas. It was about 7pm when we got to the NM-TX boarder and all of a sudden hit thick ice and snow and the traffic just stopped. Stopped and didn't mover for 9 hours. Sat in our car from 7pm to 4am. No cell service to call or search the internet for the traffic. It was 10* outside with cars and trucks backed up for miles heading Eastbound. I tend to be one to over pack for trips but much of it tends to be safety gear and supplies. We were prepared for the long wait with food, drink, blankets, etc and luckily just filled up with gas about 20 miles before in San Jon, NM. With the temps and comforts we wanted we kept the engine idling for 8 hours and it consumed about 6 gallons of fuel. Had I not filled up whem we did I may have run out of fuel or been in a potentially bad situation. Learned lots of lessons with this little adventure.
I finally turned the car off at about 3am and sort of fell asleep until some highway worker banged on my window telling me to clear out. Had some minor issues with the 4WD on the car earlier but luckily they went away. It took us about 2 hours to get to Amarillo and was 5am. The Westbound I-40 traffic in the same area was as bad or worse and had thousands of cars and trucks parked on the interstate, off in the rest stops or filled up Amarillo hotels. Completely shut down in both directions. The origi al plan was to get to Amarillo by 7pm the night before, get a hotel and rest up for the final push but decided to just load up n coffee and more snacks and head to Tulsa. Got to Tulsa by noon today. Today's drive was beautiful with all the ice in the ground and trees bit the roads were clear.
I guess my point of this post was to share my fun but mostly to tell everyone to make sure you are always prepared when heading out in a road trip. I'm sure there were many families that were worse off tha we were and woefully I'll prepared to spent the night in 10* weather on the interstate. The only thing I didn't have (don't own, yet) were a pair of Sorel winter boots. other than that we had everything we wanted to say safe, warm and comfortable. Or as comfortable as one can be under the circumstances.
Have a great Christmas all and if you see a black Ford Explorer with CA plates running around Tulsa area this week be sure to say hi.
So, we leave Orange County at 1:30am on Saturday. The weather varied for much of the trip and the driving was easy.............until we hit Texas. It was about 7pm when we got to the NM-TX boarder and all of a sudden hit thick ice and snow and the traffic just stopped. Stopped and didn't mover for 9 hours. Sat in our car from 7pm to 4am. No cell service to call or search the internet for the traffic. It was 10* outside with cars and trucks backed up for miles heading Eastbound. I tend to be one to over pack for trips but much of it tends to be safety gear and supplies. We were prepared for the long wait with food, drink, blankets, etc and luckily just filled up with gas about 20 miles before in San Jon, NM. With the temps and comforts we wanted we kept the engine idling for 8 hours and it consumed about 6 gallons of fuel. Had I not filled up whem we did I may have run out of fuel or been in a potentially bad situation. Learned lots of lessons with this little adventure.
I finally turned the car off at about 3am and sort of fell asleep until some highway worker banged on my window telling me to clear out. Had some minor issues with the 4WD on the car earlier but luckily they went away. It took us about 2 hours to get to Amarillo and was 5am. The Westbound I-40 traffic in the same area was as bad or worse and had thousands of cars and trucks parked on the interstate, off in the rest stops or filled up Amarillo hotels. Completely shut down in both directions. The origi al plan was to get to Amarillo by 7pm the night before, get a hotel and rest up for the final push but decided to just load up n coffee and more snacks and head to Tulsa. Got to Tulsa by noon today. Today's drive was beautiful with all the ice in the ground and trees bit the roads were clear.
I guess my point of this post was to share my fun but mostly to tell everyone to make sure you are always prepared when heading out in a road trip. I'm sure there were many families that were worse off tha we were and woefully I'll prepared to spent the night in 10* weather on the interstate. The only thing I didn't have (don't own, yet) were a pair of Sorel winter boots. other than that we had everything we wanted to say safe, warm and comfortable. Or as comfortable as one can be under the circumstances.
Have a great Christmas all and if you see a black Ford Explorer with CA plates running around Tulsa area this week be sure to say hi.
