Day 11 - made it to Larry's house and had Christmas all over again. Gifts were exchanged, cousins got to meet each other for the first time it was pretty cool. Being in El Paso wanted to go to an authentic Tex Mex restaurant for breakfast so Jennifer chose IHOP. It was still good though. Had a wonderful visit.
Day 12- Drove onto Ft Bliss. It might as well be called the city of Ft Bliss nowadays, it's huge! The PX is literally a mall. So much larger than when we lived here back in 97. Drove by the spot where Larry pinned me on from Specialist to 1st Lt as a Commissioned Officer. He was a Staff Sergeant. Now he is retiring from the Army as a 1SG and I am a senior CPT. Wow this trip has been one of cool memories seeing where God has brought us from. About 1:00pm decided to get on the road. It's pretty high winds but figured we'd be fine. High winds quickly turned to massive dust storm with little visibility. Dust storm turned to muddy rain, then to hail. Made it to New Mexico, turned to a blizzard with zero visibility. Driving 20 miles an hour down what I thought to be the center of the freeway. I could not see any lines on the road in the four to five feet ahead of the car the headlights let me see. Red hazard lights in the ditch on the side of the road. Several cars had slid off the road into each other, tow trucks trying to pull them out. Driving 15mph down the center of the freeway. The road signs on either side of the road were the only thing I could see so I used them like goal posts to keep the truck and camper between, scooting over slightly when oncoming traffic came toward me at their own 10 mile an hour pace. Prayed as a family for better visibility because this was just plain crazy scary driving. I didn't want to pull over because I couldn't see if "over" was a ditch we would be stuck in and New Mexico on this particular stretch had no exits for over 50 miles. Believe it or not right after our prayer we came up behind the first set of taillights I had seen since the snow started. A big semi truck. I used his lights as a guide to stay on the road and we made it to Tucumcari to a truck stop where we gratefully spent the night. Wow, fun times!
Been there and done that and it's no fun and it's scary-- but I was the one in that simi with cars behind me hoping I would help them stay on the road while I was praying I wouldn't let them or me down!!! GOD Bless those drivers that are still out there.
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