Welcome home to CNY

After a long drive north, we made it to CNY. And we were greeted by freezing cold temperatures and blowing snow.

The "Blizzard 2009" prevented us from driving north on our originally scheduled day. Because Virginia and Maryland got such bad weather, we forced to drive on Sunday morning. It was only a day lost, so it wasn't horrible. We felt confident that leaving mid morning on Sunday would guarantee decent weather, dry roads, and manageable traffic. We were absolutely correct until about twenty miles north of Richmond. We expected some heavier traffic driving up 95, but we were shocked by what we ran into. The traffic was backed up for 80 miles outside of DC!! It was an absolute parking lot from Richmond to DC. We went 6 miles in two hours. There was no way that we were going to be able to do that. We decided to turn around and head back to Richmond. From there we cut across the state on 64 to take 81 north. We thought that it was a brilliant idea.

Not so much. The entire length of 64 - all 80 miles of it - was only plowed in one lane!! The other lane was a sheet of three-inch-thick ice. Both The Boy and I were dumbfounded. The storm had passed almost 24 hours before, but the roads were still horrible and cars were still abandoned on the side of the road. As we drove we saw that the "snow plows" being used were actually farm equipment fitted with plows. Having grown up in CNY, I was totally amazed at the inability to handle the storm. I knew that the south was ill-equipped, but I had no idea how ill-equipped. Happily we made it to 81 safely (two hours later!!) and the north-bound lanes were clear with hardly any traffic! Thankfully we were headed north because the south-bound lanes looked like 95 outside of Richmond.

Out normal 9-hour drive north actually took us 12 and a half hours. We made it to Mom and Dad's safely and without major incident. Mom and Dad had our room all set up, and we immediately crashed. It had been a loooooooong day. The next morning we were greeted by this ...

I love my family and am thrilled to see them, but the bleak and barren landscape in CNY's winters can take a lot out of a girl!