During these last days in the US I had nothing to do except
whatching TV, baking some cookies and cake. (I love this time of a semester,
when everything is done.) Jan and I planned to go to Chicago again for 3 days
to do some Christmas shopping. Unfortunately the storm “Draco” crossed our
plans. The whole 3 days before our trip the news and weather channel warned the
Midwest that there will be a lot of snow nd a blizzard from Wednesday to
Thursday with several inches of snow. But as usual the forecast changed like
every other 2 hours and after we did’t get any snow at all on Wednesday
morning, I was already kind of disappointed.
Megabus canceled our tickets to Chicago because the
expected to bad weather conditions. But as there was no snow at all and
everything seemed to be alright we decided to go to Chicago with a rental car. In
the beginning this plan worked out alright. Ok, there was snow and wind and
yes, it was not the best condition to drive, but not as horrible as it was “promised”
in the news.
After a while of driving we took a break at a McDonnalds
and there we realized how heavy the wind really was. Walking 6 meters from the
car to the entrance was already a challenge and we felt cold immediately. But the
point where we got suspicious was, when the employees started to shut down
everything and announced that the store will close at 3pm. To stay safe we
searched for a hotel close by and funnily there was one just across the parking
lot (but the wind and snow was so bad that we did’t saw it).
Entering the hotel’s parking lot made us realize that we
really were in a blizzard: our car got stuck in a hill of snow. The weels diged
themselfes in so bad that in the end they didn’t even touch the ground any more
because the rest of the car was lifted up by the snow unterneth it. It took me about halb an hour
and a felt whole ton of snow diging until the car was free again. During that
time Jan managed to get a room in the hotel. The women at the frontdesk was
like “Oh I am so nice to give you shelter in this bad storm for only 79 bugs…” Well
on booking.com the same hotel was available for $55 per night! But ok, the main
thing was to get a warm and safe place to stay the night. The TV was horrible,
the announced indoor pool was closed and the WiFi was broken due to the storm. And
after 3 hours of heating the room began to feel warm and comfortable…
When it stoped snowing we went outside again to get some
food. While waiting in our room we found out that we ended up at the World Largest
Truck Stop Iowa 80. So we explored the closer environment wih our car,
searching for a good place to get some food.
Later in that night we colected
some impressions of the storm with the camera, or at least tried it:
Early in the next morning we moved on to Chicago and the
szene looked so innocent compared to the storm some hours before. And we
discovered, why it took the heating so long to get the place warm: The
isolation was so bad that we had ice on the heating in the morning. On our way
we saw so many trucks and cars that were cought by the blizzard. At the exit to
I-88 there where 8 cars in the ditch who all seemed to have missed the exit
during the storm. Some of them took the turn too early, some other ones to
late. At that point we were quite happy that we spend our night in the shabby
hotel instead of ending up on the interstate in the storm.
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