NORTHWOOD, Iowa – The weekend blizzard left hundreds of Minnesotans stranded in Iowa.
The lucky got hotel rooms.
Others slept in hotel lobbies, on gas station floors and in their cars.
“This is a first time and we don’t want to experience it anymore,” Lunbawi Thang said from the lobby of a Holiday Inn Express in Northwood, Iowa.
On Saturday evening, Thang and a passenger – driving on business from Minneapolis to Oklahoma – drove off I-35 in blinding snow and wound up stuck and stranded.
A 9-1-1 operator told the women to sit tight and wait for help. Help didn’t come for nearly 20 hours – during which Thang and her passenger ran out of gas and wrapped themselves in blankets to keep warm.
At roughly 2:30 pm on Sunday, a uniformed man on a snowmobile finally gave the women a chilly ride to the hotel.
“Very scary” Thang said, summing up their ordeal.
Nearby, other stranded travelers played cards in the hotel lobby.
“We had people sleeping in our business center, our meeting room our fitness center. Just trying to help out as many people as we could, we didn't want to turn anybody away,” said Michelle Neeley, general manager of the Northwood Holiday Inn Express.
“All of our pillows, all of our blankets, everything we have is now currently occupied. I just got one pillow back, so we have one to spare,” Neeley continued.
Next door at the Kum & Go gas station, several travelers spent the night sleeping on the floor.
Miguel Munos of Albert Lea was on his way to help a friend stranded in Northwoods, when his own SUV got stuck on a two-lane rural road.
“We were out here about five hours, finally got someone to come and help us,” Munos said. “They called us this morning and said our vehicle might have been struck by a plow.”
Munos arrived back at his car to find a deep gash in a rear quarter-panel.
Back at the Holiday Inn Express, the members of ‘Drop Tailgate,’ a Twin Cities country band, waited for the 1-35 to open so they could return home.
Asked to name a song that applied, Eric Grater named an old Merle Haggard tune, “’If We Make it through December,’” he said.