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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hamhed" data-source="post: 3346544" data-attributes="member: 70825">Dec 27:Daylight revealed our worst fears.  Snow was 8 inches in the parking lot with drifts to 11.   We were due at the airport in less than 22 hours so the pressure was on to get a plan together to get out of there.  Most of the guests had no plans to stay either so we all pitched in to shovel the lot to the point cars could reach the street - which was also 8 inches deep.  So, that might have been almost pointless except that Catherine and Gary managed to contact a friend with a rugged 4 wheel drive that could give us tire tracks to follow at least 15 miles to Hillsboro where the snow was reported to be much less deep.  One individual, without much thought or apparent experience, drove out of the lot in his two wheel drive pickup, immediately sliding into a deep ditch.  That took an hour to get him out so the rest of us could pass.  But eventually we formed a train of cars and trucks, got to the end of Main Street where, in a stroke of good luck, Sierra County snow plows were waiting.  Relief and appreciation flowed in equal amounts.From that point, we had a tense but uneventful drive to Albuquerque, often in high winds and horizontal snow.  Many hours later, rental car returned and packing for plane travel in our motel room, television news revealed the extent of “Goliath’s” damage.  The east-west interstate of I-40 was closed, the airport was working to clear the runways to work on its backlog of flights and motels everywhere were filling up.  Heading east, the storm was wreaking more havoc ahead of us.  The pair of flights and drive home cost us an extra 3 and a half hours, just part of the price to pay for a winter trip to New Mexico.</blockquote>

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