Welcome to the reoccurring feature on Maybe A Weekend, Photo Roulette. I’ve taken a lot of photographs over the years since I bought my first digital cameras. I’ve always subscribed to the theory that it’s better to get a photo now, then regretting not getting the photo later. Every photo tells a story for me even the most random ones. So from time to time I will post a photo here that may seem pointless, but with a little background will give you a greater idea of the man behind Maybe A Weekend.
For today’s entry…
So the day was February 19, 2011, I was on my second day of a weekend trip in Flagstaff, Arizona. So a little back story, I was born and raised in Ohio so I’m no stranger to winter snow, but a this point I had been living in Yuma, Arizona for over 10 years. In Yuma, it is rare to get rain let alone snow and in those years we never came close to snow. I had a friend named Scott who had recently moved to Flagstaff to complete his studies at NAU and after a few months he invited me to come up for the weekend. I had been to Flagstaff multiple times but always in the summer, but after some reassuring from Scott that it hadn’t snowed, I accepted his offer.
It was the previous day from the photo in question that i made the 5 hour drive up to Flagstaff and to my surprise I didn’t see any signs of snow. That night we ventured to Downtown Flagstaff to check out some bars and on the walk back we were greeted by a few snowflakes dropping from the sky.
The next morning we were greeted by about 3 inches of snow layered on my car, but we still proceeded with our day, until the real storm moved in. A couple hours into our day, I realized that driving in this weather was futile since I had bought tires in a town that receives three inches of rain a year and zero inches of snow. Scott lived up a hill and my Grand Am with its useless tires could barely make it on a level street, so I parked it as the photo shows. For the rest of the day, we adventured around Flagstaff by foot as the snow continued to come down.
On the next day I was supposed to drive back to Yuma, but sections of the town main roads out of Flagstaff (I-40 and I-17) were closed. So I had to make the call to my boss in sunny 70 degree Yuma and tell him that I was snowed in and wouldn’t be able to make it to work on Monday morning. Luckily by Monday morning the roads were reopened and after digging my car out of the snow, I carefully hit the road and made my way home. In that weekend, Flagstaff received 22 inches of snow, which isn’t a lot if you’re prepared, but when you’re not prepared it might as well be ten feet of snow.
So as a public service announcement to my readers that have never been to Arizona, there are two parts to Arizona. First there is the southern part that has two seasons brutally hot and mild and then there is the northern part that has all four seasons including snowy and cold winters.
Nice story Garrick.