Remember those beauteous sunshiney photooos from Friday and Saturday? I dunno exactly when things went to hell but when I awoke in Gaylord this morning, it was snowing to beat the band. The weather gods had told us this would happen so I was well warned. I shook my fist at them anyway.

I took a walk (and saw a herd of deer but that’s kind of a ho-hum event in that neighborhood). The Beatiful Gay cooked and served one of her gorgeous breakfasts. The Twinz of Terror binge-watched a Florida alligator hunting show as the snow swirled. It’s April. It’s the Great Lake State. It does this kind of sh*t in April in the GLS. The last thing I wanted to do was drive south but we all have to work tomorrow and we had mooched off the UU and TBG long enough. How bad could it be? Temperatures were supposed to rise throughout the day, especially as we got farther south. After a look at the weather, the consensus was that we would “drive out of it”.

Since we were maybe a mile from the UU/TBG’s house when I took this pic, I figured we hadn’t driven out of it yet. Heck, we were not even on the freeway yet. But I had hopes.

The I75 SUV Speedway actually looked pretty good until we got on it and realized that the precipitation that was landing on our windshield was FREEZING. Okay. The roads seemed pretty okay but I was glad that the GG decreased his speed a bit. 70 mph was too fast for conditions in my not-so-humble opinion and yes I did nag. (65, I was okay with.) Of course we were able to keep the windshield clear enough to see but this happened over in the corner where the veeeendsheeeeld vipers didn’t reach.

Oddly enough, after another 10 miles we lost this ice. I still regarded the roads with trepidation but things were smooth for a long time. And then, as we were getting off to get gas at Bridgeport, we noticed that salt trucks had been heading down the freeway ahead of us. When we got back on, TWO police vee-hickles were coming along behind us. They were actually not moving as fast as they usually do. I did a quick check of the traffic and jeebus!

The road seemed mainly wet but we knew something was up and sure enough, within minutes, brake lights were everywhere and suddenly there was a lot of slippery slush on the road. And a vee-hickle off the road. A spinout? It may have started as a spinout but I wish I could UnSee what I saw down there in the ditch. And really, I didn’t see much but it was more than enough. By the time I got around to screenshotting the traffic, we are the blue dot and the accident I’m referring to is the one north of us.

Traffic continued to be slow for a while but we never got to a dead standstill. After we split off the I75 SUV Speedway onto US23 and down to the Planet Ann Arbor, the roads truly did seem mostly wet although it still wasn’t any fun given the high winds and huge amounts of precipitation falling out of the sky. Since we are currently forced by construction to get off at the Main St. exit, we ended our journey by taking a slow drive along the river from the freeway to our own N. Maple Road. We needed that.

We were safely home and I returned from a trip to the Plum Market to get ingredients for a comfort food type dinner to see all of this ice on the sidewalk in front of the Frog Hopper. I’m sure it just melted off but it kind of looks like the Frog Hopper got sick of snow and ice and Shook. Like a dog.

What a trip? The unsuspecting young butcher at the Plum this afternoon asked me an innocent question about the weather. I apologized for giving him an earful 🐸

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