Sunday, 3rd Day on the Road: Snow!!
After driving through the Rockies in Washington, Idaho and Montana and only seeing little bits of snow, we were pretty sure we wouldn’t face snow for the rest of our journey…
I said before that Montana is flat. Well, North Dakota is even flatter. It’s only flat. We were excited to see small bumps and turns so much it was flat. It’s flatter and more boring than driving on Highway 20 in Quebec. And of course, if it’s windy, it has a lot of room to wind. And it was. We left Bismarck, ND at around 9:30am CDT. To my estimate, the wind was reaching up to 60 mph.
Driving in the morning was difficult because of that strong wind, except that at some point that wind was straight in our back, helping to push us. Nice!
As we were driving toward Fargo, ND and the State of Minnesota, we started seeing darker clouds on the horizon. About 20 miles to Fargo and the border to Minnesota, Dad said something like “This wind smells like a snow storm wind”.
A few seconds later, concentrated on the road, I asked him to look ahead and tell me if he thought what was in front of us was rain or snow. His answer was rain. I said I thought it was snow. It took about 20 seconds and we started seeing snow flakes falling and then realized that cars coming Westbound had snow on them. Some, then quite a bit!
We quickly saw a sign for a Subway restaurant for the next exit and decided to stop to look at our options. Smart move. (Not for the Subway itself, it sucked!)
After a 30-minute break, we headed back on I-94 toward Fargo and Minnesota. The more we were driving, the more we saw snow on the side of the road, but the asphalt seemed quite dry, letting us to believe that when we stopped, the snow storm had been pushed away further East and/or South. It was the case.
We ended up having to drive around snow, in fairly good conditions, for about 130 miles. But we had missed the storm by only a few minutes. Others were not so lucky. About 40-50 miles into the snowed-up area, a bunch of cars had lost control and were stuck in the middle ditch, even a cargo transport van was 100% stuck in there. Tow trucks, police cars… Well, Dad took pictures for your pleasure!
Right after mile 100 in Minnesota, around Alexandria, when Dad took over driving from me, it was clear that we would be out of the storm and would be ok. But I am still wondering what would be next in our journey East!
Dad’s drive toward the Twin Cities (Minneapolis - St-Paul) was punctuated by strong wind and heavier traffic than before.
Dakx
