Safe @ Home

Nah, this ain't no baseball game--but we are indeed safe at home.
We left Nephi at 7:40 am and arrived at Exit 118 in Idaho Falls at 1:10 pm for a 5.5 hour elapsed time.

We took a tour of The Eagles and The Falls and 11th Street and arrived home at 1:30 pm sharp. It was great to see our little bungalow sitting all covered with frosty snow.

Thanks to Jeff S. our place was intact. Jeff came over many times while we were gone and kept the two oil-filled electric heaters trimmed out just right. The house was 55 degrees when we arrived! The coldest part of the basement was only 41 degrees.

THANK YOU JEFF!

We immediately set about checking the pipes. We did have two frozen ones but Thank God they weren't frozen to the point of bursting. They are the two pipes that feed the kitchen faucet. Luckily, Jeff had opened the cabinet doors and positioned the heater nearby. If he hadn't done that, we would have been totally out of luck. We would have undoubtedly had two burst pipes and therefore no water in the rest of the house. Whew, we dodged a real big bullet on that one.

Well, anyway, we got a trickle going out of both hot and cold water and soon the flowing water thawed out the ice blockage and full flow returned. What a break, eh?

Then it was off to the Post Office to get our mail. Turned out to be two full USPS crates full of mail. Quite the ton of stuff. Next, I rushed off to WINCO and spent $75 to restock our totally depleted larder. I bought some goodies, too like shrimp and deli roast beef and some blue cheese and fresh salsa, etc. I also got some great poblano turkey sausages.

Then we returned home to fire up the snowblower and plow out a place to park the big truck as well as attack our driveway. We feared our 1994 Nissan would be stranded in the garage as it appeared the door was permanently iced shut. Luckily, there was a layer of leaves beneath the glacier and we could therefore pry off the ice blocks and free the Nissan. We salted the sidewalks and stowed out gear and finished all this mayhem at 5:10 pm.

Of course, we then had to take a breather and, gee, it's now almost 6 pm. How flies time, eh?

The drive north was mostly uneventful except I took a wrong turn on I-215 and so we had to eddy out and backtrack. Actually, that was a good thing since we needed to clean the windshield. On the 13 mile Legacy Parkway, there were fewer than a dozen cars in the northbound lanes for all 13 miles. What a great piece of civil engineering!

We did do the obligatory stop at Harbor Freight in Pocatello and loaded up on tools that we left in Arizona. About a hundred bucks later, we headed north to our Idahome.

We're really glad to be back--three of the neighbors stopped to give us a warm and hearty welcome. Chuck, the retired Coast Guard guy kept our walks snowblowed. He's going to play his bagpipes at midnight tonight. He's so cool. Jana ran into 12th Street oblivious of traffic to give Susun a great big hug. Kenton was delighted to see us and invited us for a toddy soon.

We are very happy to be tucked back into our little niche here. We love this place! I will post some photos later on--maybe tomorrow morning. Just wanted our loyal readers to know today's situation. Thank you for reading and Happy New Year and Cheers. J&S

PS--We suspect a trip like the one we just had ends on a note like this just once in a Blue Moon, eh?