We had 8 kids at the time and packed up in our 15 passenger van on the 2000+ mile drive to his funeral. Had these cable based "chains" we bought before we left the Midwest because my wife warned that sometimes chains are required when you go over the passes in Southern Oregon coming up out of Nevada. Trust me we bought the best that could be found in the Midwest on short notice.

Anyway we end up in a snow storm and stop to attempt to put on chains. A snow plow stops to help us out. He mocks our "chains" but then says to follow him to the next town and then we have to get off the road and he was reporting our license plate number and if we are found beyond the next town by police/troopers then we would be fined as this was an official warning from authorities that roads are considered closed. I have no clue to this day if he actually had any authority or if they have that level of "chains required" followed by "road closed" and each can be fined, etc.

Anyway we get going following this guy and he is going so fast that even by us trying to follow in his wake we can not see his lights at all in a matter of minutes and 15 minutes later it is almost like there was no plowing that had been done to the road in front of us. This is middle of the night black out/white out/blizzard conditions. All I know is I am going up and down and turning constantly. (When we came back through in daylight hours days later I saw no guard rail cliffs with hundreds of feet drop offs that I have no idea how we did not swerve off to our death).

Anyway we finally come off the steep mountains into a town but can't see. We get pulled over by a trooper and he says we can not be on the roads and he will guide us to a hotel.

We get to a little hotel and they will not rent us a room. They say with 8 kids and two adults we need to rent 3 rooms and need an adult in each room. We couldn't afford 3 rooms and did not have 3 adults. They didn't have adjoining rooms either. They literally told us that because of this there was no room for us in their hotel (inn).

Now we are struggling to figure out what to do as we have 150+ miles to go and no visibility. This was the poor cell phone service days with sparse/expensive roaming charges. I walked in the snow a bit to find a spot where we could call someone. We called one of my wife's relatives and they figured out what town we were in and called a few hotels and explained our situation. They found a motel/lodge that was shaped like a U that in one corner had owners quarters and in the other corner had a big open room with 4 full size beds, two bunk beds and 4 twin beds. We literally had a bed/space for everyone to be in a bed yet all the kids slept on the floor near the fireplace which the motel owner turned on for us before he left us for the night.

We didn't pay until check out - another weird thing - and he only charged us $58 the price of one of his single rooms. I then had a bit of time to kill as my in laws wouldn't let us leave that town with out having us get snow tires and proper chains and the van was in the shop down the street so I helped the motel owner configure a WIFI router he had gotten for the motel but had not figured out how to setup for patrons use.

After the van was done and we went on with our journey we started to overheat climbing the last mountain. We stopped and saw our fluid was low as it was leaking under the carriage behind the front driver tire. I packed some snow into the radiator and attempted to proceed as we were almost to that summit. I then had to turn off the engine as we were going down the other side of the mountain to not over heat. We then coast into a Home Depot where relatives were with radiator fluid to fill us up for the last 3 miles to their home. Turns out that when the cable "chain" broke it was slapping up under the carriage and broke through a rusted area of the coolant line that fed the rear van heater. Lots of rubber hose from front to back as we just cut off and threw away the entire metal tubes.

But it was a nice funeral.

Honestly - I worked in a hotel right after HS. We had maybe 2-3 weeks out of the year where we had to worry about being sold out. Other times we would do about anything to rent a room as long as it did not appear to be to very unsavory individuals that could cost us a ton. You come in having too much to drink or too tired to drive any further and want to put you head down to keep you and others safe and only have $40 in your pocket at midnight? Sure thing take this normally $79 room (back of door says $179) for the rest of the night. I rented one for $26 one night and was commended by the owner/GM for doing what was right and making him an additional $26. We even looked mildly the other way about occupancy numbers as long as they didn't ask for more towels or a crib/roll away that required more work/effort what did we care if they had 2 adults and 4 kids making them 2 over the limit. We appreciated knowing so we could put them in an area where kid noises wouldn't disturb others that wouldn't appreciate the noise. But never would I ever have imagined a time where law enforcements escorted someone to our location because it was unsafe to travel on the roads and then turn them away the way they did to us. Very disturbing...and I didn't even need to be honest with these people at the hotel as it was an outside walk up window, visibility was so bad they couldn't see my van in the parking lot and all rooms had an outside entrance...I guess I should have been more willing to not reveal the full truth about my situation...