The St. John’s

Nicole and I went to Colorado this last weekend.  It was a really short trip, but we enjoyed it a lot.  We got to see both of my grandmas while we were there.

We left last Thursday from San Jose and flew into Denver.  It was a pretty easy flight.  Caught the RTD bus into Boulder where we stayed with my Grandma Eloise.

The reason for our trip was to pick up our new car.  My grandma was nice enough to work out all the details for us to get her car.  She wasn’t using it too much and we needed a new car.  The Tacoma was starting to get a bit old and show it.  I definitely miss the truck, but the new car (2006 Toyota Corolla) is pretty cool too.  Definitely gets better gas mileage, but lacks the ability to carry anything and everything.

Well, our drive home was surely interesting.  The plan was to drive home…18 hours straight.  We figured we could do it by splitting up the driving.  The factor we forgot was weather…well, and wrong turns.  We headed out of Boulder around 11AM and were making good time.  It was cold in Colorado, but no snow.  We hit our first weather on the West border of Wyoming.  Within about ten miles we experienced everything…rain, hail, sleet, and snow.  Pretty weird.  We moved through Utah fairly well.  Intermittent rain and towards night fall we hit some fog.  It was pouring in Salt Lake City.  That’s where the trouble began.

It was pouring so hard that Nicole was having a hard time even seeing the lanes.  We were both so focused on minding the lanes, we somehow ended up on I-84 rather than staying on I-80.  Well after we got through Salt Lake and leaned back to sleep for the long overnight drive ahead of me.  I woke up about an hour later and we crossed into Idaho.  Idaho…hmm.  Didn’t sound right but I was trying to convince myself.  Well…figured out it was all bad and turned out to be a three our detour.  We got to see Idaho though!

It started to snow near Nevada and so I took over driving.  Then it started to REALLY snow.  The flakes were seriously about 2 inches diameter.  We frantically were looking for chains (I really started missing my truck at this point) and of course nobody has them at 1AM.  Well, that is except for a Chevron who wanted $119 for them.  Yeah right!  We found a Super Walmart that was open 24 hours.  I went to check that out and our chains were the only ones out of stock!  I mean really?!?  I drove on to Winnemucca, NV through a snow storm and fog in hope that their Walmart would have some.

At that point I was dead tired and Nicole was beyond exhausted.  We called it there and stayed at a hotel.  Figuring we would be home at around 6PM the next day.  Big mistake.

There was a lot of snow in Tahoe and we conveniently timed it with the end of the ski day as well.  We had to put chains on along the way and the traffic just crawled.  Ended up home at about 9:30PM.  Just barely beat our friends Ryan and Candace home (they were in LA haha).  Long trip back, but overall it was fun for us.  We survived our first road trip and we have a new car to show for it.  Now for the DMV!

UPDATE: As requested, picture from the trip and of the new car!