Whew!

Isn't this beautiful? I love how trees look when they are covered with freshly fallen powdery snow. I guess that comes from growing up in Alaska. After loading the Thule with all of the skis, boots, and poles, and the trunk with way more bags than we should need for a 3 day trip, the kids and I left Walnut Creek at 2:45pm. The plan was to pick Dave up at the Reno Airport (he'd been in Utah on business) and go to our timeshare in Tahoe. We were making great time and I thought we'd actually get there before dark, when the snow hit. I am glad I didn't check the weather forecast because I might have chickened out if I'd known what we were in for. To make a long story short, we ended up at a stand still for over an hour, then had to crawl behind the traffic that had been caused by a 22-car pile up! The scene changed from the above daytime beauty, to the below dark and dangerous.
We finally arrived at the condo at 9:45pm, a mere 7 hours later...it usually takes around 3 hours to get there. When we were stuck I kept thinking about how much worse it could be and how little we were truly incovenienced. We had a warm, dry, AWD van, the kids were watching a movie, they had car snacks, I had just filled up so we had a full tank of gas, and I had the all important hot tamales and peanut m&m's, because you really can't drive 4 kids alone without them! I even had internet access from my iPhone and was able to check my email. Ryan and I got out at one point to play in the snow, but a police officer told us to "get back in the vehicle!" I got ahold of Dave and he told me the road was closed from the airport to Truckee, so he had to get a hotel there. He met us the next afternoon, when the road re-opened and the shuttle picked him up because I was skiing with the kids.
It's a good thing that driving in the snow is kind of like riding a bicycle. You never forget how to do it.