The Aborted Road Trip

Erie to Buffalo ~ "The Lake Effect"

Is this what Polar means"

We left Erie, PA around 8 am for a return trip back home. The weather outside was terrible. The lake effect snow and wind were rightly named. It was nearly a whiteout with 30 to 40 mile an hour cross wind. The snow was blinding. The highway was plowed, but many sections had hard packed snow on the roadway. There was a  seven car pileup near our location. We did see a tractor trailer jackknife on the Interstate. I followed a TT (tractor trailer) with his fourway blinkers on, I was talking to him on the CB (citizen band radio) when another TT came barreling down the interstate at 60 mph or so. I couldn't see the TT ahead. I said over the CB "What a bonehead passing us at that rate of speed" The TT driver said he actually had to look out of his passenger side window to see if he was still on the road. This bad road experience only lasted about an hour and a half. (Erie to Buffalo) Once we headed East and actually just a few miles down the road there wasn't even a trace of snow. I had been warned about this route (the lake effect), but I was figuring that I could beat the weather and be pass all of that. The rest of the trip home was sunny, cold and windy. We arrived home at 9:15 pm. I had driven 630 miles. I had called home earlier to have our daughter Christy turn on the furnace switch in the shop. This would enable me to start the dump truck and drive the camper into a warm spot to unload items that would freeze.
This trip to Arizona didn't turnout as expected, but that's part of the adventure. A few days have passed and my mother-in-law is doing better. The game plan now is to wait a few weeks to see if everyone is stabilized with all of us and go to plan "B"
Plan "B" might go something like this; Fly to Los Angeles, visit a friend and start a road tour from there towards the Southwest. We have done this before and enjoyed it. I am sure that I can find a route with people, places and things that I haven't explored before. We really haven't explored much of Utah. Zion and Bryce Canyon were marvelous and maybe a starting point for this unique state.

That is what we did and saw