An Advent Adventure

Yesterday I decided that since I’m no longer overly excited about Christmas hoopla, I could reinvent this season for myself by having one adventure per day that is a little outside my normal routine. Nothing too big or challenging. 

The weather was predicted to get interesting this afternoon; around 4:00 there might be sunshine, wind zoomies, maybe some snow. 

I texted a friend to see if she'd like to go to Lapham Peak Park with me. We could climb the observation tower where on a good day one can see 25-50 miles in all directions (I’m guessing about those distances). It sounded like a potentially cool jaunt to put into a regular Wednesday. I told Len what I was thinking about and he said he wanted to come, too. 

Luckily, she couldn’t and he did.

We left the house about 3:00 and it took the regular twenty minutes to drive there. Along the way the leaden sky broke and beams of sunlight lit sloughs and fields into Rumpelstiltskin’s gold. 

As we were about to turn into the park, the sky went from leaden to the murkiest dense muddy sky I’ve seen in a year. Ahh, that sky would be the snow squalls the weather app said would be coming. We drove into the park. Snow hit but it wasn’t really snow, it was graupel, those teeny hails that hit with the rat-a-tat-tat of pencil leads against a windshield. We got to the parking lot, it was clear. No snow, no other cars, just us. We walked the path towards the tower as the wind was picking up. We climbed half way up the tower when WHOOSH a Paul Bunyan wind gust slammed into the tower and made it shake. 

I was done. I didn’t need to blow off any structures today. Len, who is generally more valiant than me, agreed. That was too intense plus the steps were growing slippery.

We skedaddled back down and now the walkway we had just trod TWO MINUTES EARLIER was slippery. And the parking lot was white. And the sky was jammed with clouds scudding like a harbor full of sail boats.

There was still the driving home to do and it was a Midwestern ice capades of mayhem. Two ambulances gingerly zipped past and then we saw two cars off the road, head first into the rock wall around a housing development. Len drove slowly and then he drove more slowly. We were on Summit/18; the graupel on the cold road was sheer shiny ice. The car's thermometer had dropped from 38 to 31 degrees so the world was exactly at the point where everything is ice and slush and stays that way.

When we finally turned onto the bypass, it was fine. Snow plows with their salt and chemicals had already addressed the road and driving was normal. So we are home. Twenty minutes out. Forty-five back. Who knew an afternoon drive to a park could get so dicey so fast? 

(Right now wind is roaring outside our house.).