We traveled in Chad's company car, which was a big mistake. His car is geared for traveling in the Houston area where ice and snow are pretty nonexistent. The tires are not all-weather tires.
The roads are iced over from the ice storm. People in Texas are not used to driving in these conditions. There's people in the ditches everywhere. People are in their cars with their tires spinning and the car is not moving. Some people are driving with their hazards on. Chad has no control over our car. He is doing the best he can, calling upon his years of Minnesota winter driving, and yet there is nothing we can do in the vehicle we are in. We are now crawling in the traffic, and we are scared. Chad is literally white knuckles on the steering wheel. I have a panic attack. Not a figurative panic attack, like oh geez this is an anxious situation. A bona fide, medical emergency panic attack.
When Chad said, "we aren't going to make it to Houston", I thought he was being overly dramatic. I thought that for about 30 seconds. I then realized that he was not kidding, and I could see that he was sweating and sheet white.
We are not prepared for an overnight stay. We have no overnight bags, no phone chargers. We quickly do a search for the nearest hotel and find out that was six miles out. It took us an hour to go six miles. We pull into the Holiday and I run up to the front desk. I ask if they have any rooms available and she is pretty rude and tells me no. I ask her if there are any hotels in the area with rooms and she tells me that they are all booked. Looking back, I can see that she was stressed and overwhelmed with the situation because people were coming in and out seeking rooms and she had to turn them away.
We go to the next hotel, La Quinta. I again ask if there are rooms available. He tells me that they have nothing. I plead with him, and ask him if it is possible to camp out in his hotel lobby. I tell him I will pay top dollar. He then checks with his assistant and they say they have one room left. It turns out it was HIS room, and he was giving it up to our family so we could stay the night. The phone was ringing off the hook with travelers seeking shelter because the roads were not passable. He said, "nobody was expecting this. This took everyone by surprise."
The roads gridlocked. People were stranded in their car for 9 to 15 hours. It was like a horror movie where people abandon their cars. Only we were living it. The hotel was not a great hotel (very thin walls and the rooms were pretty gross), but I was grateful to get the last room by the skin of our teeth.
Who knew that the worst driving conditions we would ever experience in our lives would be just out of Dallas, Texas? I do not ever remember the highways being gridlocked in Minnesota where people were stranded in their cars overnight.
We did have an emergency back up plan for our son. Chad's work friend came and picked up Corbin from our house and he spent the night at her house.
We did not sleep well at the hotel. There was noise that was coming from below us and next to us that lasted quite a while. In the morning, we turned on the news and found that the gridlock was still not cleared up. They were doing overhead chopper shots and people were still in their cars from last night. Here's the story from the news:
A winter storm has caught thousands of Texas motorist off guard on Interstate 45 Southbound outside of Dallas heading toward the Houston area. Icy conditions around Corsicana have virtually brought traffic to a standstill.
According to Texas Department of Transportation, which maintains the roadway during winter storms, I-45 is open but traffic is crawling.
The main trouble spot appears to be in Navarro County on I-45 at SH 31 where there is a slight incline on the freeway.
The area was hit by 1 to 2 inches of ice that keeps re-freezing. The ice is making it impossible for 18-wheelers to make it up the incline backing up traffic for miles behind them. TxDot says it has had crews out scraping the ice off the freeway and retreating it with chemicals.
Martina Alaniz, a Houston area mother was trying to return to Houston from Dallas and has been stranded on I-45 for nearly 12 hours.
Alaniz, left Dallas last night at 8 p.m. and said she has only made it as far as Angus, Texas in Navarro County. According to Google maps that journey would typically only take a motorist 56 minutes. It has taken Alaniz more than 12 hours.
Alaniz says they are in a stretch of I-45 with no stores, gas stations, or restaurants. She says motorist around her have gotten out of their cars just to walk around and stretch their legs.
The Winter Storm caught many Texans off guard, temperatures across the state plummeted 40 degrees plus on Sunday.
Read more: http://www.myfoxhouston.com/story/24868282/nightmare-gridlock-on-i-45-leaves-drivers-trying-to-get-to-houston-from-dallas-stranded#ixzz2v0uA2ckx
In the morning, the traffic was still crawling and the chopper reporters were telling us to avoid the area as it was not expected to be cleared until mid-day. MID-DAY?!?!? Hell, I want to go home!!!
I told Chad to go to the front desk of the hotel and do a recon on what other stranded guests were planning to do. The front desk was advising them to take an alternate route, which was way out of the way, but it avoided I-45 where the gridlock was still happening. We decided to take our chances and make a go of it.
We stopped and bought supplies at the gas station (drinks, snacks, and car chargers for the phone) and off we went. The journey took us five hours but we finally made it home to Houston about 4:30 p.m. Monday afternoon. The irony of the situation is that Courtney made it back home to Minnesota before we made it to Houston.
This was not supposed to happen this way at all. I learned a very valuable life lesson, unfortunately the hardest way ever.
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