One morning, Chad checked the weather and saw that a winter weather watch was in place for Lewistown and we were predicted to receive 4-8 inches of snow over a two day period. Late that evening, I received a phone call that my dear Grandpa had passed away. I immediately got online to book flights out of town, but then looked outside when the computer was loading and noticed tiny snow flakes. Thinking to myself, "Surely four to eight inches of snow won't prevent me from getting a flight out the next day..." Well, four to eight inches of snow won't prevent me from flying out, but 12 to 16 inches of heavy spring snow sure will and it will shut down the entire town in the process.
Again, I was helpless due to the weather. At first, the weather was trying to keep me out of Lewistown and now the weather is preventing me from leaving! The song Hotel California kept going through my head, "you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave." The next two days were pretty rough, all I wanted to do was to fly out so I could be with Grandma and Mom. The weather had other plans and the snow kept falling and falling and falling.
Here is the snow the first morning:
And the second morning (substantially more snow):
Chad and I were finally able to safely book our flight out of Billings for early Saturday morning. Billings is about a 2 hour drive and we had to drop the kiddos off at the kennel in Billings before we went to the airport. Something always seems to come up when we are trying to make it out of the house for any sort of extended time. This time, we were just picking up speed outside of town and Chad's car started to shake and pull to the right. We stopped, Chad checked the tires and to see if there was any obvious damage. He didn't see anything, so we tried it again. Five minutes later, the same thing occurred, so we turned back towards the house to load up my car and give that a try. Now, as many of you know, my car is a wannabe mountain car. It only looks like my car would be able to travel through snow. Alas, it can not. My car hates any kind of inclement weather. Chad and I weren't quite sure if we were going to make it out of our neighborhood in my car, but we had to give it a go because we didn't want to be stranded in the middle of Montana if his car broke down without cell phone reception and ended up missing our flight. My car got out of our neighborhood without a problem (thank you awesome tires my Mom got us for Christmas!) and we were finally on our way to Billings!
Once we got over the Judith Mountains, snow was nowhere to be seen and it was a quick ride over to Billings. Chad had heard from one of his patients that back in the day the Indian tribes that are in Central Montana wouldn't dream of settling in the Lewistown area in the winter time because it was considered a "snow hole". When the rest of the state was dry, it would always be snowing in the Lewistown area. The heavy moisture in the winter time did create a great place to summer for the Indian tribes. There was always (and still is) an abundance of greenery, wildlife, fresh water and cooler temperatures. So when the winters last 9 months out of the year, the summers better be amazingly epic, or else why am I here again?
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