Lianne's perspective... Friday!
Marie and Ran finally arrived, though, which was one big relief. And they had a good car -- though they had one meeting with a ditch while doing the same thing I'd done with letting cars go by. And yeah... it was a good thing they took the twin-bed room with a closet, because Ran had two suitcases plus lots of assorted other stuff. :> Diana had claimed the littlest twin-room for herself, and I had the non-master queen room on the theory that it only had one bed and we still had two people to arrive. Our neighbors tried the connecting door again upon hearing voices, and this time I popped over and opened it back at them, so we said hi.
But Kami and her friend Jeff hadn't arrived, so we were still worried. Of course, judging from last year, Kami would undoubtedly have a good story (but probably not suicidal frogs again). So we stayed up and waited. Cell phones don't work there, though we used my analog roam to leave a message for her. We watched the pilot of Firefly, which was really good. Marie and Ran crashed around 1:30am, but I wanted to stay up and wait longer, so we put in the first episode of Wonderfalls and Derek and Diana were promptly addicted. We finally headed for bed after that, leaving a note for Kami. I was up until 3:00am reading and fretting and getting extra blankets and generally fussing even though there was nothing really to be done. They arrived sometime between then and 6:00am when I peered out the window and saw another car... another snow-capable car, which was a good thing.
I took off work Friday and Monday so I wouldn't have to rush there or back again. Since -- for the first time -- I didn't have anybody traveling with me, I hitched a ride with Derek and left my car at his place. It was easier to pack the car with only three people riding, but we had more stuff for extra days and meals and such. We got off to a good start, with Derek taking the first driving shift until Harrisonburg (aka the last stop in civilization and land of cute scooters that Diana wants to steal). Almost the moment I got behind the wheel, we got precipitation. It started as rain and then changed to snow and more snow as we went up and down the mountains. There was one startling round-a-curve-get-dramatic-change-of-weather, which was actually pretty cool. Derek's car is a dream to drive and handled beautifully through the muck. There were a lot of people who wanted me to go faster, but tough; when possible, I pulled over and let them go ahead, since I didn't particularly want them behind me anyway. The picture here is from Ran's car, but the perspective is pretty close. :>
When we reached the access road to Snowshoe, everyone was being turned back who didn't have 4-wheel drive. We did, so we went on up. Diana and I huddled in the car with the windows steaming up to make us blind while Derek checked in... finding Logger's Run was a bit of an adventure, since the turn-in wasn't posted well even in good visibility. But we got there and had a /garage/ to pull into and unload everything. Oh yeah, that was nice. The lodge was beautiful. It had five bedrooms (three with twin beds, two with a queen, and the master bedroom had a tub-jacuzzi in the bathroom), though one of the twin rooms was a bit weird... it was tucked behind the garage and didn't have a closet. Actually, all it had was a rocking chair. I took some suitcase racks down there and would have transported a dresser if I could have, and found a heater to warm it up since it was on the bottom floor. But it did have its own bathroom right next to it. I loved the lampshades that were all over the place... Tiffany-style in really pretty designs. I took lots of pictures of them. The main area of the lodge was incredible, though... an L-couch, big dining area table, spacious kitchen... the TV was above the fireplace, which put Diana in a weird position for playing games, but it worked out (and let us hook up game systems, which was the sticking point in the last place we stayed).
Derek and I worried a lot that night, though. We didn't know what kind of car either of the other two groups would be driving... and especially when Marie and her friend Ran got pretty late (and we knew they'd been about 2 hours behind us earlier), we got worried. He made curry as the most easily reheated dish of the ones planned, and I shoveled the driveway area and peered out the windows a lot. We did get to laugh at our arriving neighbors: a bunch of college or just-post college guys who had a big van and a truck. They had to push the van into the driveway, with about six of them pushing and whooping and hollering as it finally went in. They were pretty cute. :> And funny. We could hear them through the walls as they explored and as they tried the connecting door to our unit. Rattlerattle. The hot tub on the deck tempted us, but we didn't use it because we wanted to make sure to be available for any necessary car-pushing with other arrivals.
