It was quite cool having the opportunity to work at Stanford. We finished up in a few hours and then went over to this really trendy little organicy eatery and had some wild tasting chicken burgers that were actually delicious!
We had chatted about the fact that I had to drive from San Fran to Reno and the guys I was working with were giving me some pointers and, in light of what they said, when I went to the rental car place, I decided to maybe ramp up from the sub compact to an all wheel drive vehicle.
Turned out that it was extremely fortunate that I did go to the AWD! I drove a few hours from San Francisco and then started driving up into the Sierras and BOOM - the snow started coming. I started getting a little concerned as there were signs that I needed chains, yet I was led to believe that if I had AWD than I didn't need chains. Turned out the latter statement was correct. This was one of the most interesting experiences I've had in a while.
Starting to get into the mountains and seeing the slight signs of snow....
It starts to get a little worse and the traffic starts backing up and slowing down....
The traffic actually stopped for a while at one point and gave me time to look around and appreciate the gorgeous scenery. Beautiful pines becoming heavy with the snow....
There was suddenly a huge area where the side of the road became a literal parking lot for people to pull over and put chains on their vehicles.Here is a picture that I found interesting - some people pull over and put on their own chains, but most people utilize services. There is a whole business up in the mountains of people who put chains on for $30 and then when you get to the other side, they'll take the chains off for $15. Here's a picture of a guy putting chains on a truck. These guys where orange jump suits and they're actually called "Chain Monkeys".
Theres this little cart that is parked in the middle of the road and you have to stop at the cart for them to ok your passing. If you don't have chains or AWD then you don't get to go through.
We were barely even moving towards the middle of the pass. The roads were so full of snow and it was coming down harder. We were going like 5 miles an hour and you could hear the vehicles with chains as they thumped and clanged along the road.
The worst part of the pass was the Donner Pass area. It was actually laughable as they had all these Donner things -- names like "Donner Ski Slope" and Donner Family Park and Donner State Park and Donner this and Donner that. And the amusing thing was that I had just finished reading a book on the Donner party and it was just kind of eery that they had all this recreational stuff named after them and they definitely had nothing going on recreational-wise. Poor people.
I pity the poor Lexus SUV that I dutifully followed the whole way. Whatever lane he was in, I followed -he had a NV plate and he was driving not too slow but not too fast so I seemd to trust him :) I was pretty tense after the drive, though. I usually take my shoes off when I have a long drive and when I finally started getting into Reno, I went to move my foot and my right foot big toe was totally cramped.
End of story - I did make it over safely - about 2 hours later. It was long and tedious, but I can say I've been through the CA/NV pass, aka the Donner Pass, in a really really bad storm -and survived! Yea for all wheel drive!
Glad you made it through the mountains and Donner Pass without getting eaten up by delays (okay, it's late - and that's the best I could come up with; sorry). The pictures are pretty, and I'm happy to hear you had 4WD and didn't need chains. When do you get back to Lake Villa? I'm sure Calvin is freaking out you've been gone so long!
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