Indie Travel Challenge Week #4: Warm or cold, what’s your dream winter travel destination, and do you have any travel plans for the coming months?
My dream winter vacation, is …oh , I’ve been doing it for the last 7 years ..AVOIDNG THE COLD!
Don’t get me wrong. I love the snow. I am also the person that will wake you up at 5am with a freshly packed snowball to the face while squealing (yes…squealing) “IT’S SNOWWWING!!!!”
But as much as I love the snow I hate, hate, hate the cold. So I avoid it as much as possible. (I moved to Las Vegas for this reason, and the 120F (40-45C) summers)
….BUT….
While moving to Vegas, I hit the worst winter I had seen in 6 years.
(ok, it was the worst because I hadn’t actually seen winter in 6 years).
My boyfriend and I moved from Miami to Las Vegas the day after Thanksgiving a couple years ago for work. Since it was late November, we decided to take Route 10 (the southern east-west highway in the states, that goes through the middle of Texas) to avoid the cold and potentially horrible weather on Route 40 (the more northern interstate highway that also follows Route 66).
We got through almost all of Texas when suddenly … IT STARTS FREAKIN SNOWING!
A freak snowstorm had come up
THRU MEXICO
and hit south-west Texas!
And the temperature drops. So its snowing, but sort of melting on the road as it lands, and then as darkness kicks in, the sort of melted snow on the road starts to stick and freeze. Then, to make matters more awesome, on the radio we hear an announcement that the El Paso highway is closed down due to snow!
Did I mention we were towing a 4×8 foot U-Haul trailer with a Saturn Ion? Oh I didn’t? Well , we were.
So, at about 9pm, after sliding and crawling down the deserted western Texas highway (anyone who has been on route 10 knows that it can be 50 miles or more between tiny little ‘towns’), we hit the next town and had to stop…in VAN HORN, TEXAS.
This tiny little town is about 120miles east of El Paso. And this ‘Blizzard O’Death And Destruction’, was seriously like a few inches of snow, which melted on the roads. The roads which froze once the sun went down, and the roads which then commenced to turn to a giant ice rink.
2 or 3 inches of snow with a little ice shut down El Paso and forced us to be stuck in Van Horn Texas for 2 days. (because this area never gets snow and has no way to deal with it: no plow trucks, no road salt, nothing)
Not going to lie though, I loved Van Horn. There are a mass of $20 a night ‘hotels’ (aka roach-motel..which don’t actually have cockroaches, and I love to stay in when traveling)
and
the freshest meat ever! (because the owner of the hotel is the grandmother of the restaurant owners, whose parents killed the cow and chicken they were serving on their ranch less than 12 hours earlier)
Yes, read that again to follow it.
So anyway, that was my last winter and the only real winter I have seen in 7 years. I like to stay where it is warm. I am currently in Medellin, Colombia where it is eternally springtime and I love it and plan to stay for the next few months. I try to avoid the cold, but I would still love to take a trip to Alaska (in the summertime), or to places where there is snow I can make snowmen and snow igloos, and go sledding.
For like a week.
Then I want a steamy, sunny, tropical island.
Oh yea, and Route 40, the highway we avoided due to potential bad weather, was sunny, dry, and 75F the entire time.
CHEERS!
This is part of Boots n All 2012 Indie Travel Challenge. I’m doing this in hopes of becoming a more consistent and better travel-blogger. And maybe getting a sponsorship to visit some of the hottest places on Earth. Or maybe Antarctica. I mean, if I’m going to do cold, I’m going to do it right! CHEERS!
About Dani Blanchette
