Snowed Away

We're still at Ellen's sister's house in northwest New Jersey. A strong storm hit our region yesterday, actually worse where we live than here, so we decided to stay an extra day rather than drive into the worst of it. Today the snow has stopped, but the wind is still very strong, and the snow is blowing and drifting. You can see above that it's blown off much of the grassy lawns…

…but drifted up on the front porch. We're going to try driving home today, about 170 miles. In normal conditions it takes about three and a quarter hours, but we'll go slow, and might get delayed by accidents (hopefully not our own!), so I expect it will take much longer. When we get home, I'll probably have to shovel a space for my car at the end of the driveway to keep it out of the road, and if it's as deep as they report (about 16 inches), will shovel the rest of the driveway tomorrow. Our pet sitter fed the cats Sunday morning, but didn't expect to be able to get back to our house after that, so we need to get home to feed them. And Ellen and I are both anxious to get home anyway. It's been fun, and Christmas was great both here and at my brother's house, but it's time to get back.