First Snow and How I Spent the Last Night of My Vacation Sleeping in My Jeep

Those of you located in the North East may have noticed that we got pummeled by a snow storm two weekends ago, before it was even November. I was excited at the first sight of snow, thinking it would just be a little flurry and then pass.

I could have avoided the whole storm entirely if I had stayed in Long Island, but as it happened this was my vacation and I went to New Jersey and Ithaca NY. In New Jersey I stopped and picked up my baby, the new Jeep. I will properly introduce her in another post. Thank God I got the jeep or I would have been in serious trouble in this storm.

On the way up to Ithaca Thursday I hit the first flurries. It wasn't too bad, although it definitely was coming down more than I expected. By the time I reached Ithaca it basically stopped. There was no snow on Friday and on Saturday afternoon I was warned about the storm coming in. I wanted to leave in the late afternoon and hopefully beat it before I got stuck in Ithaca. This apparently was a mistake.

My route home was to go south and west, which means going through PA and then NJ and NY. The snow started coming down not far outside of Ithaca but it was light. The more I went on the harder the snow got. I'm driving a nice big Wrangler now mind you, and it's supposed to be made for rough conditions. At a certain point I realized I wasn't going to make it home that night. I thought about just trying to make it to my parents house in NJ, but then I realized that even that was too far for the conditions at hand. I was 3 hours away from home and 2 hours away from NJ. We reached a point on the highway where it was almost impossible to see and me and the person in front of me were doing about 20 mph or less. That's when I knew it was time to get off the road and find a place to stay. My car actually spun out across the road also, which made me definitely not want to continue.

I found a gas station off the highway and pulled over. The girl inside told me I'd have to go to the Poconos area to find some place to stay. Luckily I have a GPS in my car and used it to look up nearby lodging. The Poconos was considerably farther than the nearest place I could find on my GPS and I did not want to go far and risk spinning out into the middle of the road again. I was hoping for a motel six but instead I found an Inn in Sterling PA. I called them to make sure they had space and they did.I shall let the place remain anonymous.

Getting there turned out to be quite a chore. I became more and more concerned as I started traveling down smaller and smaller roads. Luckily I discovered how to use my 4 wheel drive and then felt much more confident about driving. At least I wasn't afraid of skidding every two minutes. I was a bit concerned that I was heading to the Bates Motel so I let a few people know where I was, just in case anything bad happened. I was almost at the hotel, going down a small hill when my car spun out again. It was pretty terrifying, especially since I was on an incline. I completely spun around on the road. Luckily it was totally desolate.

I reached the Inn, which was hard to find in the now massive covering of snow. I had to figure out where the driveway was because all I could see was snow. The guy I'd spoken to on the phone was there waiting for me. It turned out that the place was pretty nice ( although all the reviews I've read say it's not in good shape but I was far too tired and overwhelmed to notice and there was a ton of snow covering everything). They had just opened for the season but still wanted $100 for a room, which was apparently the cheapest of their rooms. The guy who was behind the desk was actually just watching the place for the owner, so he didn't know a lot about what was going on. He offered to try and bring the price down since I said I really couldn't afford that. He called the owner and was trying to get the price down for me. Unfortunately there's still tax so the cost was $88.

I paid, put my purse down in the room and then realized I had no cell phone reception. I was trying to find a spot where I could make a call so someone knew I was alive. My jeep seemed to be the only place I could get even spotty reception. I went outside to get my bags and to make a call from the Jeep. I was on the phone for a while and when I got out into the snow again to go back inside the door was locked. There wasn't anyone else at the inn, although apparently there were some people across the way at some little houses, but I didn't know that.

I rang the door bell over and over again and banged on the door in the hopes of trying to wake up the person inside. I could see a light under the door inside and down the hall so I couldn't understand why no one could hear me. The place was otherwise deserted. I kept ringing and banging on the door and even managed one phone call to the Inn before my phone died. No one was responding so I decided to search for another way inside. I walked around the house, in 2 feet of snow, wearing only my thin canvass converse shoes and getting my pants soaked up the leg with snow. I could see where the light was on in the back but each door I tried provided no help. There was a back office door which seemed unconnected and another door up a staircase all the way in the back ( I seriously investigated every entrance). From the door up the stairs I could see my room, which made it even more infuriating. I seriously contemplated breaking the glass at one point, but that seemed like a bad idea.

I couldn't even tell where the hotel clerk was sleeping in the house, because I wanted to try and throw something at the window. I walked around and around, tried the front door again was pretty ready to give up. All the way in the back was another building, which I thought might have been more lodging. There was a door, which I didn't expect to be open, since I thought it went to more rooms. Surprisingly it did open, but it opened into some sort of boiler room or heating room. I thought about sleeping there because it was warm, but it was so tiny that I would have had to sit huddled up on the floor and I had already tracked snow in. I figured if I got really cold I could come and warm up there.

By this point my feet were freezing so I just resigned myself to sleeping in the Jeep. I turned the car on, blasted the heater and took off my shoes to try and get warm. Lucky for me I had a whole backseat full of clean laundry so I changed socks and pants and was able to be decently comfortable. Thankfully my mom had given me a heavy jacket before I left so I used it as a blanket and piled on some other clothes and a lighter jacket. I had to turn the car off obviously so the heat went with it. I used a few towels from my laundry to add warmth and it wasn't too terrible. I lay the passenger side seat down and tried to sleep on that. I have slept in my car before, although not the Jeep, so it wasn't a totally crazy experience. The hardest part was staying warm. I woke up a few times and turned the car on so I could have heat, but once the sun came up I slept a lot better.

I wanted to make sure that in the morning when I got out of the car that someone would be there to open the door, because I wasn't really in the mood to soak my shoes again. They had told me that breakfast was at 9am so I figured by 8 or so there would be someone awake. I woke up probably a quarter to 8 and heard voices so I knew I could get inside. I hopped out of the car, not really wanting to explain that I spent all night in the Jeep. The Inn clerk was confused when I showed up at the door and horrified when I explained my experience.

He apologized profusely and clearly felt really terrible. He told me immediately he would refund the money and told me to come in and have coffee and breakfast. I warmed up with some coffee and made myself an English Muffin while he called his manager on the phone. They refunded me the money for the room ( yay!) and let me use the room anyway for a while. I got to go upstairs and warm up and sleep for a few hours on the giant bed. I wasn't keen on staying long since I'd already spent way more time than I wanted to getting home but I really needed the sleep. I headed out as soon as I was rested and found the roads in perfectly good shape.

I was exhausted by the time I got home, but thankfully all in one piece. Since no one at work is ever going to let me live this down, I figured I might as well write about it and share it for all. It's also a lot less energy to write it down than to keep retelling it in all its glory. So that folks, is how I spent my Saturday night sleeping in my Jeep.