Icy Texas

Last weekend my mom and I semi-spontaneously decided to drive to Texas to visit my sister and her family. I checked the the traffic on Google maps (click on Traffic on the upper right side after page loads) obsessively all day Friday as we planned on leaving in mid-afternoon. There were a lot of red lines around Dallas, but by the time we left it was improving. We figured that since the Superbowl (Yay Packers!!) was in Dallas that they would be working their tookasies off clearing the road after the latest winter storm for the fans. We figured wrong. WAY wrong. We sat on a frozen over interstate for over 3 hours behind a back wreck. When we finally starting moving forward again the fastest anyone could go was 20mpg or less because the entire interstate was a thick layer of solid ice. It was very tense and very scary. We found out the next morning that Texas State Troopers closed the interstate behind us. =O 

Mom was driving, thank you God!! She grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and knows how to drive in winter conditions. (Congrats, Packers!!) Still, her hands are probably still sore from gripping the wheel so tightly for such a long time. We made it to the first small town, got off the interstate to get gas and take a very overdue bathroom break. The hotels at that exit were full. My sister had called ahead for us and found a motel at the next exit, so we creeped our way down the interstate again. I called that motel and found out that it was about 6 miles away from the exit, and that just seemed ridiculously far to go into a town that we didn't know and that was frozen over. So, we took at chance and pulled into a Quality Inn. We scored the very last room. Relief!! The caveat was that we had to park into their overflow lot which was up a hill. One more burst of white knuckled hold-your-breath driving, but thankfully the hill was snow not ice and we had no problem parking. It was almost 3am and were completely fried and exhausted. We crashed hard....

...for about 5 hours. Then we were up for the free breakfast (they had waffles in the shape of Texas, too funny!). We chatted with other people who had been trapped on the frozen interstate and met a sweet couple from Green Bay headed to Austin to watch their Packers play. We ran into them again at our next stop, neat! We headed out around 9am. The roads were still icy, but the far side of one of the shoulders was usually clear so we drove on that so we had some traction. The roads were icy until we almost reached Dallas, then it turned slushy since the temperature was above freezing. We had to drive on 3 big fly-overs in Dallas, but everyone drove slowly and cautiously. We were south of Dallas before the roads were partially dry. 

Thanks to Mom's excellent driving skills and prayer we made it to my sister's new beautiful home perfectly safe. Thanks to smartphones I was able to keep in touch with my family and friends via texting and Facebook, so lots of people would pray and send their positive and protective energy to us. 

We had a fabulous, although too short, visit with my sister and our Texas Peeps.  We put a whole weekend of shopping, eating and playing into 1 looong day and one loooong evening. I fell in love with Ikea, and got some cool stuff too! And I fell in love with my nieces and nephews all over again. Texas is pretty awesome, except in the winter. Despite what some Texans may tell you, Texas DOES have a winter. And it isn't pretty.

I wish I could say that I despite the stress and the travelling that I ate healthy and cleanly. I didn't, but I did control my portion sizes and drank lots of water. I did burn some calories playing and running at the park with the Peeps. And we did lots of shopping paced walking which has got to count for something. Amazingly I maintained my weight!! Yeee-haw for not re-gaining on vacation!

Oh and one more thing, WHOOHOOO PACKERS WIN THE SUPERBOWL!!