Ditch Diving Discouraged

Today I spent most of my day driving a route that should have taken about a quarter of the time, all to make my husband very happy. He found a truck he wanted - just his style: old, manual transmission, and easy to work on. AND it can tow his snow machines, so for him it was a pressing matter to make sure no one else bought it. "There's three other people who looked at it yesterday!" Steve reminded me urgently. I couldn't imagine that there would be people lining up to buy a 24 year old truck, but it was obviously important to him, so off we went in pretty snowy, icy conditions.

It had snowed about a foot over night and was still snowing. We went about 40 mph all the way to Eagle River (the speed limit is 65 for those who don't live here and most ppl go about 75-80) and picked up the truck.

Steve making cleaning the snow off the truck before hitting the Old Glenn

The way home was crazy. It normally takes 15 minutes to be back in Anchorage from Eagle River. Today it took at least an hour. We were at a standstill for about 15 minutes as the rest of the way was down to one lane from three. This was all thanks to the maniacs driving way too fast and following other drivers way too closely.

hard to see how deep the snow is that these vehicles are stuck in.
also hard to see that the berms/ditches are made of snow that has been frozen
nearly hard as rocks, so vehicles don't usually leave the scene without
quite a few dents and dings to show for their sojourn in the snow.
It also doesn't help when someone follows you into the ditch and then
rear-ends you there lol.

There was 3 cars off the road, buried in the huge, hard packed snow-berms/ditches on either side of the highway because they hadn't been paying attention and couldn't stop where traffic was at a standstill from an accident about a half mile up the road. That accident was a 10 car pile up that involved 10 totaled cars who had obviously bounced off each other (some looked like a few times) before careening at high speeds into the ditch. Once we got past that there was a continuous pattern of Police cruisers with flares out closing down two lanes of the highway while tow trucks were in the closed lanes trying to retrieve all the cars that were pale into the ditches.

about a mile worth of backed up traffic, on a day when most people should have stayed
off the roads...this part of the highway took the longest to get through

Overall we saw about 20 vehicles in the berms/ditches in a 3 mile stretch of road. It was crazy! And even crazier was the fact that people were STILL driving like maniacs, which is why the number of ditch divers was growing steadily as the minutes passed.

Needless to say we were happy to make it home safe! Steve cleared out some snow in our driveway with the help of the plow company, and then we headed over to my parents for a birthday celebration for our little Beka, who turned 20 today.

blowing out her 20 candles :)

I wanted to give here the best present ever, a little newborn to snuggle, but I guess he had other plans :( Poor Beka, she won't get to see him (other than on Skype) for two months. Now I'm especially glad we are heading down to Seattle in March for a nice getaway! Anyway, despite the stressful driving, it was another nice day spent with Steve and family and I'm sad it's nearly over...

Oh and PS: Aunt Connie surprise me with ANOTHER amazingly handsome and soft sweater for my stubborn little man. Its beautiful and so special because she created the pattern herself! He is such a spoiled baby already, now he just needs to come out to enjoy all his goodies :)

hard to see the rich color in this picture, I need to get a better one soon.
It's so beautiful!