Ski New Mexico - Getting There

We went skiing the first week of March.  We booked the trip about three weeks beforehand.  The ski resort we chose was Sipapu, NM.  It's a family-owned resort that's small, very inexpensive, and great for beginner skiers.  Brian is the only one that's been skiing before, and that was over twenty years ago.  We were very excited to go!  Just the chance for my snow-deprived Houstonian kids to make snowmen was reason enough to go.

 We took our new van (by the way we named it Van Gogh) and the six of us (Rudi included) headed out.  Immediately the temperature began to drop.  We knew that the temperature at Sipapu was about 32 degrees, but didn't realize we were going to drive through a cold front with 16 degree temps.  Being the wonderful mom that I am, I dressed my kids in shorts and flip-flops for the trip.  They froze their tails off every time they needed to get out for a restroom break.  I was just acclimating them to the week ahead, right?  ;)

The trip there took about 15 hours, and it was scary! There was freezing rain and snow, the roads were icy, we saw several wrecks, and could barely see out of our windshield.  I was on edge almost the whole way there (probably didn't help that I had several coffees and energy drinks.)  Brian had to pull over several times to scrape the ice off of our windshield.

The snow and ice on the road. This is a four-lane highway.  There's a left lane, but no one dared to drive on it.

   

This is what our winshield looked like for a few hours.  The wipers and windshield washer fluid were frozen and the defroster couldn't keep up.  Brian pulled over every ten miles or so to scrape the ice off.

I will say that even though there is NOTHING in New Mexico to look at, they know how to keep their roads from icing over.  Once we hit the state line, ten hours into our trip, we noticed a drastic difference in the highway surface conditions.  Well, that is until we hit the mountains.  I was a nervous wreck climbing those icy, steep, mountain roads.  The speed limit on those roads is 10 mi/hr for a reason! Thank God we made it to our destination, safely.