We made it to the 41/Road 200 intersection late Friday night to find it closed. Weighing our options (motel in Madera or go in the south gate) we turned on Road 200. The snow created an hypnotic spiral. Road 200 at night was utter blackness with few recognizable landmarks and several inches of snow on the road. Fortunately, the Bigelows and the Silkwoods had their "street lights" on as we passed O'Neals. (Rescuing calves and lambs?)

Inching through the ranch in our trusty Mercury Mariner hybrid, we arrived safely at our house to find the power out.

The PG&E outage line said that 1400 customers were out caused by a tree falling across power lines. I assumed that was the whole ranch. Chris, I would have been there with my toothbrush and towel if I'd known.

Saturday morning we made coffee with our Ikea coffee press (best $9 investment ever). We went to the casino for lunch thinking the power would come back soon. Abandoned cars littered Lucky Lane...PG&E trucks heading up Road 417. Snowing hard all through lunch.

Our guests arrived later that afternoon after being pulled out of the ditch by Dave Sprinkel. The power came on at 4:30, but....

At 10:30 p.m., we ran out of water. John went out to look at the pump, couldn't see anything. This morning at 8 a.m. we reached Jay at Wellco who was "snowed under" with emergency calls. He gave John a few things to try. Lacking a battery powered hairdryer, John poured boiling water on the pump electrical curcuit. Viola! OK, the restored water was a lurid shade of reddish brown, but it cleared up eventually.

"Aren't you afraid all that snow will pull off the rain gutters?" asked our guest.

And then it was time to leave the serenity of the ranch and head home.

I never dreamed there would be so much snow at the ranch. All the animal tracks and the stillness...

Many live oaks branches broke off under their unaccustomed load of heavy snow. A shooting star poked through the snow at Chris and Lane's front fence.