White Sands 2021 - National Park #44

 Sunday February 14, 2021

We woke up at 5:30am to a snow storm.  It was unnerving.  We rushed to get out the door so we packed up quickly and hit the road around 6:30 and dang, it’s been an unprecedented adventure.  

Waze took us through the Lincoln National Forest and some of the roads hadn’t been snow plowed.  We actually followed a snow plow for part of the journey.  In fact, we’ve seen more snow plows than cars for much of this trip home. Cars skid all arounds us.  Rather than driving 55 or 60mph, we drove 30mph.  It was pretty scary.  

We finally arrived in Lamesa at 1:30pm or so (with losing an hour after crossing into TX) and we stopped at a Dairy Queen for lunch.  When we went to open the door but it was locked but as we were walking back to the van, an employee opened the door for us.  

We’d been “racing” to get back to Dallas before 7pm to pick up Hooper from PetSmart but Nick called and they told us they’re closing at 4 because of the weather so it’s taken some pressure off but we’re sad that he has to sleep up there all by himself.  It’s 5:40 now and we’re still driving and have 125 miles to go so it’ll be after dark when we get home.

This was definitely an adventure.  We stopped near Abilene for gas and it was five degrees outside with a negative windchill factor.  Hopefully we’ll make it home in time to wrap our pool equipment pipes before they crack.  Wish us luck getting home because I probably won’t check back in again. 

Overall, fun trip with a white-knuckled drive home, making National Park #44 UNFORGETTABLE.

Post script:

We got home around 8:30 or 9:00pm and our pool filter was off the charts full pressure so we turned our equipment off.  It dropped below zero Monday night.  Our sprinkler system was damaged, many of our pool pipes cracked and our pool froze over.  Most people lost power - we did not.  The storm lasted a good week and school was cancelled due to strain on the power grid.  No Texas alive has ever experienced anything like this in this state.  Snowmageddon is an event we'll never forget.  Damn, what the hell 2021? Dad dies, we all get COVID and now this? (And my mom lost power for more than 3 days and has tons of damaged pool equipment) 

this is our above ground pool piping