Schmitz Mobile Chaos Unit: Snow, and Other Problems to the North

I was heading up to my Father-in-laws, in Crystal Lake Iowa, for a date with a doctor and my big decision was whether I went on Wednesday night, or got up wicked early on Thursday and did my driving at that point.

Since my back has been acting like a wild donkey, I decided that I would drive up on Wednesday night, visit with with his grumpy, magnificant arse for a while and do the remainder of the driving in the morning.

That's what I eventually decided on and I was glad.

He was awake when I got there, which I didn't expect. He came out to the kitchen table and we sat and talked for nearly two hours before going to bed which I certainly DID NOT expect!!

He seemed genuinely happy to see me (again, which I did not expect!) and we had a great time sharing stories, laughing our butts off, a bit of crying, and really just having a fantastically great time which could have only been better without the constant barrage of his cigarette smoke which I think may have permanently damaged my right sinus... LOL!

I was excited for the drive up since there had been three days of road treatments since the last storm. Oh sure, in Des Moines, the last storm was not so consequential but when you got North of Ankeny on I-35, you immediately respected the power of what rolled thru. I counted 22 cars remaining "sidelined" and countless other areas where you could tell that a vehicle of some type had been extracted from.

That was before I lost count... which was before Ames.

Honestly, after Ames, you didn't see much carnage because I think the authorities got wise and started shutting the interstate down to protect peeps from their own peepy-arses.

But, the sites were incredible! And as sites generally are, they're far more incredible to the naked eye then what they appear to be in picture-a-gra-phies...

That being said, I'll show you a few pics anyways...

This is when I first arrived on Wednesday. I did the driveway loop with tears in my eyes as I had lost sleep the previous nights fearing what I would find when I got there. I figured my truck would get in and out of the driveway without much issue but know that I could not just leave it in that condition. My F.I.L.'s buddy put his bobcat on a trailer and pulled it over and cleared the living mother of $h!+ out the driveway and had also SHOVELED THE DOORWAYS to the garage and house!!! My wife and I shall be forever indebted to this man!! Also, with just my headlights shining on it, you cannot appreciate the depth of the snow... Wait until tomorrow.

OOOOOooohhh.... It's tomorrow suddenly! The ridge that our friend cut thru with the bobcat is seriously about 18 - 20 inches deep and it goes up considerably from there as it gets closer to the window. I would estimate the snow below the window to be about 26 - 29 inches deep.

From roughly the same area as the picture above, this is the driveway where it loops around the big'ol cotton tree. Again, without context, not that impressive, but those piles of snow are averaging about about 30 inches in height. Not good for whenever Spring decides to, uh... spring.

In his town of Crystal Lake, IA. This is a road that is usually easily passable by two vehicles with on parked on the side of the road. I'm thankful that I encountered no vehicles at all!!

Stop sign about 1/2 buried. The snow piles at intersections were high enough that you had to pull out a little bit at a time to see if anybody might be approaching from either direction.

Downtown Crystal Lake just before you get to the lake. The snowpiles were about 9ft tall.

The Railcar is in the pic if you can find it!! The plowed snow was almost exactly the height of the top of the old train car that is parked there.

That's Crystal Lake as it is today, 02/28/2019.

This is in Garner Iowa as I had dropped the F.I.L off back at home and was heading back to my own home. This is in the Hardees parking lot looking North with Hwy 18 just behind that big snow pile. While there is some height aspect to be considered with this pic, it's not very much. Semis and their trailers would ALMOST disappear behind that snow pile behind the cars!

Employee parking at it's finest!!

This is on Sage Ave. around where W. 8th St. butts into it. It's really hard to see in the picture but when I went by here the night before, there was a tractor, I think, that had a HUGE snowblower type thing on it, cutting the drift back from the road. Whoever was running this thing had a bright light or 8 on it that I could see from many miles South of town, but I couldn't figure our what I was looking at!! It appears what the person was doing was blowing the initial drift back from the road. Only, in this instance, they started back about 15 yards from the road and cut a HUGE gap between from the ditch and the drift coming out of the field. Amazing machinery!!!

This is just West, and a bit South of Klemme on hwy 69. The drift is beginning to build. This is heading South.

Same, heading South... The drift on the right side of my truck is now about 10ft tall.

Same big-@$$3d drift, but a bit further in.

Same again, but the drift is taller here. It's hard to see from pics... If you can see the more consolidated black'ish dot that a bit upper center/left in the pic, that's two snowmobile riders.