Colorado blizzard strands Overland Park family on a highway for 12 hours

Crystal Murphy of Overland Park told her son Wednesday night that this year’s spring break will be a “trip you’ll never forget.”

It’s hard to forget spending nearly 12 hours inside a car, trapped on a snowy Colorado highway.

The Murphys got caught in a spring blizzard, considered big for this time of year, that dumped heavy and blowing snow from Wyoming to Michigan. Hundreds of drivers were stranded for eight hours or longer.

The snow shut down Denver International Airport, closed hundreds of miles of roads and left highways littered with stranded cars and motorists. Stretches of Interstates 25, 70 and 80 were shut down on Wednesday. Most were opened by Thursday.

Murphy, husband Jay and son Brendan drove to Colorado to visit Jay’s parents in Bailey, southwest of Denver, and to see the Philadelphia Flyers hockey game against the Colorado Avalanche in Denver.

They knew snow was coming, so they left Johnson County in their Dodge Dart at 3:50 a.m. Wednesday, hoping to make it to Bailey before it hit.

They ran into a light mist near the Kansas-Colorado border. Then, about 20 miles away from Limon, Colo., on I-70, the weather changed, just like that.

It was raining. Then it was snowing. Hard.

“It was such a whiteout that you couldn’t see the vehicles in front of you,” said Murphy.

They wanted to get off the road at Limon. They could see an exit sign. The town was just half a mile away.

“And then everything came to a halt,” said Murphy, a certified nurse-midwife. “And nothing moved for about the next 11 hours.”

It was nearly 11 a.m. Mountain time.

At their last stop, they all had gotten drinks. They ended up nursing those drinks for hours.

While they waited, they ate the snacks they had packed for traveling: peanut butter pretzels, chocolate caramels, gummy bears.

To save gas, they turned the car off for stretches until it got too cold.

“We knew as long as we had gas we could stay warm,” Murphy said. “We were really thinking that we were going to stay there all night.”

The part of the trip she’ll never forget was peeing outside, in blowing blizzard snow, into a cappuccino cup.

Luckily they had good cellphone service and chargers, so they kept family and friends updated while they waited. Murphy posted pictures from the car on her Facebook page.

People kept texting, “Are you off the highway yet?”

Traffic started moving after 10:30 p.m. They had called ahead and reserved a hotel room in Limon, but when they got there the hotel had no electricity because of the storm.

“But they told us about the United Methodist church that was taking people in,” said Murphy.

The church had already settled in about 50 stranded travelers for the night by the time the Murphys arrived.

They slept on the floor of the church’s fellowship hall.

“I discovered that I’m too old to be lying on the floor,” Murphy said.

By Thursday morning the family was back on the snowy, but passable, roads again, headed to her in-laws’ house in Bailey — and warm showers.

They still planned to catch that Flyers game in Denver.

This story was originally published March 24, 2016 at 12:17 PM with the headline "Colorado blizzard strands Overland Park family on a highway for 12 hours."