A snowy Christmas road trip makes for an adventure

Well, I had another adventure. Of course what I might think of as an adventure, some of you younger whippersnappers might think otherwise. For this ole grandma sometimes just getting out of bed seems to be an adventure. Now on with my story.

The plans were made to spend Christmas down in Madison and Middleton and daughter Susie's mother-in-law Doris and I were to be picked up by son in law Mike on Thursday, December the 20th. On Monday morning, he called to say that a big storm was to be arriving on Thursday and he would pick up us on Wednesday.

Well ... I thought I had better get on the ball and get stuff packed and ready to go. But on Tuesday morning about 7:30 a.m., he called again to say the storm was going to arrive on Wednesday and that he would be picking us up at about 10 a.m. that morning. Well ... that really knocked me for a loop, and as you older senior citizens know the older we get, for some reason the slower we get.

So I had three hours to shower, eat breakfast, and finish my packing and umpteen other things to do. By 9:30 a.m., I finally had it all packed and sitting by the door, and I sat down to catch my breath at 9:45 a.m., Mike arrived.

I was so tuckered out, I was ready to just sit in the car and rest. As we took off for Madison, I thought to myself, poor guy, he has to put up with us two ole grandmas for 137 miles. But he seemed to have the patience of a saint. And when we went through Pittsville, he even stopped and picked up a sack of doughnuts for us to munch on.

Doris and I talked up a storm, and before we knew it, we were going through the town of Necedah and what was so surprising is it began to snow, and within a few miles it was coming down so hard we could hardly see the road.

So instead of Thursday, it arrived on Tuesday.

It was an old-fashioned blizzard. By the time we finally arrived at the interstate, it was really beginning to pile up. We hadn't been on the interstate more than a dozen miles when the traffic came to an abrupt stop. We sat for a good 15 minutes. When we began to move at a snail's pace, we moved three miles in an hour and half. Once we finally were moving along at the speed limit, we saw what the problem was. A big semi-truck had jack-knifed and several cars had smashed into the semi. There were ambulances and tow trucks all over the place. So much for leaving early to beat the snowstorm. A little further down the road, a fella passed us like we were standing still. And then a little further down the road, there he was down in the ditch.

We finally arrived at Mike and Susie's in Middleton, we were very happy to make it without an accident. It snowed all the next day and night, and by the time the storm moved out, we had gotten 20 inches of snow. The snow was so wet and heavy, many trees had broken limbs. It was the biggest snowstorm that we have had in a month of Sundays. But folks, we sure did have a white Christmas.

To be continued ...