STRANDED... in Wyoming

We left Idaho Falls on Saturday morning with the hopes of making it to Denver to sleep for the first of two nights on the road home to Virginia. We headed east on I-80 and after only five hours on the road we found ourselves in the middle of a Wyoming winter. There is always wind in Wyoming but when you throw in blowing snow it totally changes the situation. It wasn't until after we passed Rawlins that we realized how bad it really was. We found ourselves driving with very little visibility with no town nearby. We drove for about 2.5 hours (what seemed like an eternity) until we reached a safe place to stop the van. With no visibility we didn't want to risk pulling to the side of the road and having someone hit us as they tried to make their way through the storm. We made it to a rest stop about 40 miles west of Laramie and pulled in with a bunch of other stranded travelers. Fortunately we were prepared for such an event. We had water, food, and blankets that we could be comfortable for some time ( as comfortable as you can be sitting in a vehicle with three small children). We explained what was happening to the kids and they were troopers. The temperature was only 16 degrees and the wind was blowing at least 40 mph. We parked next to a wall protecting dumpsters from the blowing wind in hopes that the wind hitting our vehicle would also be lessened. For 8 hours we sat there in the cold, trying to sleep it out. I (Janelle) didn't sleep much at all as I needed to make sure I started the van for about 10 minutes every hour to give us a little heat. We had 3/4 tank of gas but we weren't sure how long we would be stuck there so we wanted to conserve as much as we could. Also, Emorie wasn't happy to be sleeping in her car seat so I had to hold her and try to make her comfortable and warm enough to sleep. About 4am we decided that the wind had died down a little and it was worth a shot to see if we could make it to Laramie. Surprisingly, the roads weren't so bad then (well, at least in comparison to what they had been). When we made it to Laramie we were greeted by parking lots full of semis and other stranded travelers, as well as what seemed like a few miles of vehicles pulled to the shoulder of the interstate. I guess some time after we made it into the middle of the mess, the interstate had been closed to further travel... nice, huh! It is not an experience we want to go through again.