Welcome to Iowa

We got the OK from my office to leave at noon on Friday because we'd heard scuttle that a blizzard was blowing in on Saturday, the day we'd previously planned to drive north.

Good thing we left early.

Aside from thick fog once we hit the Iowa border, we made excellent time on our drive up; 11 and a half hours, a new record! There wasn't even much snow on the ground and I spent several miles lamenting that fact to Joey who replied, "What did you just think there'd be a fresh, pristine blanket of snow on the ground just for you?"

Yes, I had thought that.

We made it to Joey's parent's house by 12:00 p.m. on Friday and fell asleep about 2:00 because we all sat up talking about nothing for an hour and a half, which is really a lot of fun to do. On Saturday morning I woke up bright and early thanks to our puppy who has ADHSD (attention deficit, super hyperactivity disorder) and who couldn't understand why in the world no one else was up but him. I got fed up and took him on a walk.

Henry's initial reactions to his first snow and ice:

• What is that white stuff and where am I supposed to go to the bathroom now? (It took a full 12 hours before we could convince him that yes, it was OK to use the snow for his business. He kept looking for grass which is buried ice covered snow.)
• It's cold and I don't like it.
• Why do my paws slip when I walk on the shiny stuff?
• When I try to jump on a snow drift, why do I fall?

Once we got back from our walk, Joey finally woke up and we I hauled tree limbs down to the burn pile that had broken off during the ice storm last week. I can't believe how many branches fell down, or how far it is to the burn pile from the house. Holy cows.

And, after all that work, we headed up to Ankeny to hang out with our friends. Rumor had it that a blizzard was coming, but there wasn't any snow and we figured we were fine.

It started snowing at 2:00. Hard. We moved up our dinner plans an hour (had a great time, too, thanks Joel & Amber!) and finally started the 45 minute drive from Ankeny back to Monroe.

It had snowed a lot more than we thought it had. A lot more. The freeways were 100% snow covered in places which made it very difficult to tell which lane you were in, or even how many lanes there were. Joey spent most of his time in the center of what we thought was the middle of the road.

About halfway back to Joey's parents house, we hit a whiteout. For those of you who are from down South and don't know what a whiteout is, it's when the snow is blowing across the plains so hard and fast that all you can see is white in front of you and around you. We couldn't see more than 8 feet in front of us and nothing out the side windows.

I started getting really, really scared.

"What should we do?" I wimpered.

"We'll be fine," assured Joey, my excellent driving husband who had both hands on the wheel, white-knuckle style.

So, since there wasn't anything else to do, we prayed and prayed and prayed. The whiteout lasted about 20 minutes and then abated to just blowing snow. Under normal circumstances blowing snow is pretty bad but, after whiteout conditions, blowing snow is a walk in the park.

It is now 19 degrees outside (it was 71 when we left TX on Friday) and I am freezing cold but am quite satisfied that I will have experienced all of Iowa's winter weather gamut by the time we go back to Dallas.