Battling the Blizzard

"We could stay in Gallup another night," I suggested, looking out at the snow-covered parking lot at 6:00 a.m.
"Yes, but the storm is supposed to move east, so things could get worse," Andy argued. "Albuquerque doesn't get that much snow usually. If we leave now, we might have a better chance of getting across the mountains and there is much ore to do in Albuquerque than in Gallup."
So we set out from Gallup on Interstate #40, heading toward Grants. The highway was closed the other direction from Winslow west.
I-#40 before us looked like a ribbon of light brown, where sand had been spread across a sea of white.
"As long as I keep seeing headlights from the other direction, we're okay," said Andy. A state cop passed us. "That's a good sign too," he added.
We maintained a steady 30 m.p.h. Grants was 67 miles, according to the GPS. It would take us hours. Semis zipped around us, probably doing 45 m.p.h. Andy held the wheel with two hands and kept his foot steady. "The problem is they probably have only one plow to do miles going both directions," he said. The snow-covered interstate, dotted with huge chunks of mush and ice, looked as though it hadn't been plowed at all.

On the eastern side of the Continental Divide at 7,290 feet, the sun broke through with a penny-size patch of sky. "It should get better since we've crossed the Rockies," said Andy.

Around Grants the road improved for a while, and we could actually see pavement, but then the blowing snow and 50 m.p.h. gusts of wind took over. "I can't even tell where the lanes are," said Andy, as we passed through Acoma. "They really need to sand this stretch. It's downright horrible. Solid ice...a different kind of bad from Gallup." Winter Conditions. Take Extreme Caution! flashed the overhead sign.

Near Laguna, a Fed Ex piggyback slid off the highway into the median divider at the base of a 1,000-foot rise going west. We clocked three miles of backup the other way. "And it's only going to get worse," said Andy. "They've just started to clear it, no plowing has been done that direction so the road is all ice, and the storm is moving east."

We counted ten spin-outs, two cars flipped sideways in the ditch, before the road cleared a couple miles west of Albuquerque. Amazingly, NO snow! "I'm glad we're here," said Andy, breathing a sigh of relief. "There's a lot of snow behind us."

In Albuquerque at the entrance to Old Town, the statue of La Jornada stood out against the sky. It was the first blue break we had seen in the weather all day.

For four hours in the afternoon we walked around Old Town Albuquerque, visiting San Felipe de Neri, the Spanish church established in 1706, and browsing in the shops. American Indians lined the plaza with their handcrafted jewelry spread on the ground, anxious to make sales but shivering from the bitter cold wind. Haddie and Najeh at Fetish Gallery helped us pick out white corn maiden to add to our kachina collection back home. We chatted at length with owners of two other shops, the rewards of visiting in the off season on a blustery day.

"I'm so glad we left Gallup, or we would be stuck in the motel room," said Andy, as we walked back to the car. "At least we've been outside half of the day." Huge black clouds billowed over the mountains around Albuquerque, and winds whipped around each corner. By evening, snow threatened.