Snow...

Well I must tell you that the snow has won the race. Today I saw the first snowfall since I have been in the states. I thought I was winning the race south, but as I found out, we can rarely beat mother nature.

Yesterday I met up with Josh at around 5pm in the town of Miner. I got off to a late start yesterday. I was about to head off after church when one of the ladies there invited me to her house for lunch. I said thanks but no thanks as I wanted to get going but she seemed very worried and concerned that I needed to eat before I continued south. we finished up lunch around 1pm, I thanked them very much and was on my way.
I made it only about 15kms to the town of Miner before Josh found me. But it was nice to see a familiar face and be inside a car out of the cold.

We arrived in Memphis around 8pm. Josh lives in a nice house with two other guys, Cameron and Murph, and what good fellas they are also. So there I was again in a house full of great people with a shower and a warm bed awaiting me. After washing my clothes, having a shower and organizing my gear for the next day we all sat around for the night chatting and laughing over Camerons favorite series on TV about zombies. It was again nice to be around quality people and just relaxing in a warm house.

Cameron was good enough to offer to drive me back out of the city to a spot where I could begin to hitch hike back to Miner where I would start back south. I said thanks and see you soon to Cameron around 9:30. As soon as he took off the rain started. Being windy, raining and around a temp of 2c I was hoping to get picked up quickly. 3 hours later I was still standing in the rain, jumping up and down to keep warm and giving every car that passed me the biggest please help me smile I could muster. Eventually a good guy, Dan, was to stop and he was heading all the way to Miner. I tell ya, getting into the warmth of that car was a blessing. My fingers had no feeling in them at all and my face was that numb it was dificult to talk properly, it was hard enough for poor Dan to understand me with my accent and now to add to it, a face and mouth that would not work properly due to the cold, well not for the first 10 mins anyway until the heater helped thaw me out.

We arrived in Miner around 2pm, but with heavy rain, strong wind and black clouds as far as we could see, I decided it would be best to dry of my clothes and rest up for the night in one of the cheap motels in Miner. So I am here now in a warm room, looking out the window at the snow falling, and it is falling heavier every minute. After just checking the forecast and seeing that the weather will be dropping to -4c in the next few days, it looks as though I am going to have to rug up and tough it out for the next few days.

Good news also, as I said in my last post, I am always misplacing things, and thankfully this is the story with my camera and it has turned up in a pocket of my backpack that I almost never use, so I will have some more photos up in a week or so when I get back to Memphis.

Thanks heaps to the boys in Memphis for helping out and I will hopefully being seeing you guys in 8 or 9 days.