'On our trip back from our river trip we came to a small mountain pass in Nevada where I-80 was closed. After sitting in line for 15 minutes I started playing with our GPS to see if there were any alternate routes to be had. I found some byways that in theory would get us around traffic. We were in the left of two lanes when I saw a Semi to our right break off and head for the right shoulder. I followed suit and then proceeded to slowly back up the on ramp to the exit we had passed. Aleena cursed me (in tone only) the whole time I did this. I did it in steps and soon enough we were back to the rest stop. After potty breaks we launched off on our adventure. The side road immediately was less to Aleena's liking, (it was dirt, or rather mud), but she humored me as our suburban sludged through the sticky red clay. I followed a route that seemed most hopeful until it meandered around to the North side of a slope. 3 to 6 foot snow drifts let me know why there weren't any other tracks leading up this dead end. I again began backing our suburban, this time not up an on ramp but down a narrow, muddy cleft-side track. I don't know how Aleena does it but she has a iron stomach, because the whole time we were squirreling around on this side-road she had her face buried in her book, reading away just to take her mind off the fact that we were 4x4ing. Cute girl. After white knuckling the 100 yard, narrow, back down we flipped around and returned to the rest stop. I guess I scared the pee out of us as we all had to go again. "Come on, lets just wait it out", Aleena pleaded as I pointed the burban's nose under the freeway to undiscovered dirt track roads and we adventured on. This time the road took us down a frontage road that brought us by the wreckage of the twin trailer-ed Semi that had rolled. I hope the driver was okay. It looked bad. Hopeful we plodded along a couple of miles, all the time I was thinking, "we just might get around this". The road was gummy but pretty smooth. A rock fall or two slowed us down as I had to pick our way through the debris. When the road turned sharply away from the highway I was a bit disheartened. We were heading into the north side of the pass and the snow was evidencing its menace quickly. At first there were just a few inches covering the road, but those inches quickly turned to 12" and I knew we would most likely not find the road passable ahead. Aleena, eyes directed firmly at her book, "why, Dan, why?" I replied, we have nothing better to do and this is kind of fun. "yeah go fast, daddy!" Jonah cut in. "I'm mad at you, you're not supposed to be doing this." Lea counseled, modeling her sweet mother. What did Micah say? He was grinning so I took that for "go, Dad, Go". When the road turned directly south up the North side of a canyon, I decided it was time to take a break, as when were not likely to go too far up it. We pulled off the main road and shot up a steady incline pawing our way to a shuddering halt on a steep slope. We backed down to a meadow, hopped out, had a snowball fight, took pictures and went 30 yards further up the track to find out the snow drifts had closed this hopeful artery of escape as well. After backing and turning around, we zipped ten minutes back to the frontage road to find traffic had just begun moving around the accident. So much better than waiting around. :) Below are pictures of the snowball break.'
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