Road Trip Blizzard

It seems like every April we make a trip to Utah or Idaho for a wedding or a graduation. This year we happened to manage to go to both in the same week. (Good planning by those involved!) It is also becoming a tradition to drive through a blizzard to get where we are going. This year was no exception.
We knew a storm was coming. We checked the maps and knew we couldn’t avoid it, but hoped for rain instead of snow. Things were getting worse after we passed Sydney, Nebraska. Since there aren’t a lot of good stopping places I thought I should call 511 for a road report. All the roads into and out of Cheyenne were already closed, so we decided to turn around and go back to Sydney. We found a motel that let us check in at 10:30 am (thank you AmericInn). Soon after I-80 was closed in both directions. We braved the elements to cross the parking lot to Perkins at dinnertime, only to find it had closed at 5 pm because of the storm. We went back to the motel and watched a movie. About 15 minutes before it was over the power went out in the whole town. We were tired and hungry and it was dark and so we decided to just go to bed. About 45 minutes later the fire alarms started. I was thinking it was probably a toaster or something silly and wanted to ignore it, but I could hear someone banging on every door down the hall saying “Get to the lobby and bring your coats.” So we got dressed in the dark and went to the lobby with all the other motel guests. It smelled like something electrical was burning. There was a lot of black smoke in the room with the pool. Sydney has a volunteer fire department. All the firefighters had to get to the fire station and then to the motel in the dark and blizzard. To make a long story shorter, we didn’t have to go out in the blizzard, we went back to our rooms in about 1 ½ hours, and the power came back on in the middle of the night. The police and firefighters were great, the motel staff was amazing, and the guests were good sports about the whole thing. Blizzards across the plains are scary things, but we survived to tell the tale.
This is the firetruck right outside the front door of the motel. You can't really see the snow blowing completely horizontally. The firemen were out in the freezing, blowing snow and then came in and worked in their hot, heavy clothes, and then went back out in the cold all sweaty. It was hard to tell the sweat from the wet snow on their faces.

This picture and the one above are from my phone and are not very good photos. Through the glass to the right of the door is lots of black smoke and the light behind is another fire truck outside.

This is the parking lot the next morning after the snow and wind stopped.