This is a pretty old story, but what the heck.

When I was very young my dad moved us (two kids, a cat, and a pregnant wife) from Buffalo, NY to Cleveland OH. A blizzard swept in while we were en route and there were no motels with any vacancies anywhere. My dad kept driving and driving as the storm kept getting worse and worse.

He finally managed to find an old, run-down motel that had no vacancies but did have a trailer out back with a kerosene heater. We spent two days in there with my parents sleeping in shifts to make sure the heater didn't catch on fire or overcome us all with fumes.

To my sister and me it was a fabulous adventure. My parents were terrified.

The supreme irony...five years later we moved again, from Cleveland to Hartford and got caught in another blizzard, this one in Pennsylvania. Fortunately, this time we found a nice, cozy Holiday Inn.