Traveling Highlights: Weather and Erosion Issues

I took a few days off work, and traveled with the family and Charity and her babies to Idaho to meet Baby Todd.  We went through many areas that have had weather related problems on the roads this year.  Caleb and Annie live in Rexburg where they go to school at BYUI.  Traveling over Donner's on the 80 we passed where they had problems with landslides a couple weeks ago.  You could still see where they had tried to push back the landslide.  However we had no real issues with weather traveling to Idaho.  In Nevada, we cut up from Wells to Twin falls, and on that road they had also had erosion issues with mud sliding into the highway.  We were limited to one lane, so had to wait about twenty minutes and follow the pilot car to get around this area.  They were almost done with the work, so we had no problems here on the return trip.  In Idaho there were no problems.  We did have some snow left over from scraping the parking lots.  However it mostly rained which wasn't good for the snow.  Sunday morning there was a good snow storm while we were at grandpa's  The little ones went out to see if they could catch flakes on their tongues.
The return trip was a bit more eventful.  Both directions we passed where there had been flooding and closure of the freeway west of Pocatello.  On the way back we were sure of the location, Raft River, however there really was no sign of the previous flooding.  There was a really good rain storm, and hail after we left Winnemucca.

This was on Tuesday.  We thought we were making good time and looking forward to getting home.  However things turned snowy after we left Reno.  Chains were required at the state line.  It was slow going.  We ended up creeping along, getting to the base of Donner's Pass and being turned around.  They said there were white-out conditions.  I heard this was verified by a news story which showed a view of the snow storm.  We encountered one vehicle, with chains, which went into a spin, maybe two times around.  The backed into the center guard, but looked like they were ok.  I didn't let Sheri stop as to do so would have put us in jeopardy of being hit by cars behind.  Snow is pretty but scary.

We spent the night at Boom Town.  We were able to check out Cabella's, which had a very large African section, as well as a domestic animal section, and a couple fish tanks.  Tony and I also looked at guns.

The next day we tried again.  We left Boom Town at 8 a.m., but there was an accident on the freeway, so we jumped off at the first exit, Verdi.  I hadn't realized Verdi had such a nice park.  We may have to return sometime.

However driving wise it was a bust.  Charity found another route going even farther inland on bridge road, however this was false as it never came out, and people were in a precarious position trying to get over the one=lane bridge.  We backed up the hill and turned back around, and headed back to Boom Town.  however there is no way to get on the freeway were we started or where we got off.  We ended back in Reno, and traffic was still backed up.  After over three hours, we were back in Boom town at the gas station so I could use the restroom.  The only good thing was getting back on the freeway, the accident was picked up, and traffic started going pretty well.  We didn't need chains in the end (we still had ours on from the night before which was nice in Boom Town) and so pulled over in Truckee to take them off.  I did this getting under the car in a puddle.  Then Sheri drove the rest of the way, mostly uneventful.  It was impressive the swelling of the sloughs between Sacramento and Stockton.