Sorry for the long story (sometimes we need some time killers ;-) ):
Definitely stay out of the mountains of NM in the winter with your RV. I had a Toyota Corona (yes before the Corolla) and the snow in the Mtns along I-25 from around Santa Fe over to Las Vegas, NM almost did us in. The snow started falling in bigger and bigger flakes and soon we were in 2 ft of snow. The Corona stalled (had like a 1100cc engine) and would restart but would only run for a few moments. Seemed like it wasn't getting enough air. I looked under the hood with a flashlight and all of a sudden I saw a sticker on the air filter cover that said "move the air filter opening to "here" in high altitude" - BINGO, it started and ran nice but now we were in too deep of snow to move and I had no chains. All of a sudden a semi drove through the virgin snow with chains beside us. Then another and I was able to get our car into the ruts of the semi and get out of the where we were stuck. I decided to buy snow chains at the earliest oportunity as we came down the hill. My car had 13" wheels and we could only find 15" chains.....I ended up buying the 15" chains so we wouldn't get stuck through the rest of the mountain trip. I had to almost wrap the chains 1.5 times around the tire and then it was a rather bumpy trip until I took them off.
Our goal was to get up into CO and eventually to Ft Collins to see grandma. We made it to Las Vegas NM and started heading north on I-25 toward Raton Pass and we started getting sideways snow just south of Raton pass on I-25. We were on an open plain and open to all of mother nature. We couldn't see the front of the 2ft hood on the car so I decided to pull to the right and off into the grass (2 lanes off the main road) while we could still see it the edge. We sat there a while and I tried to get the car back up on the roadway with no luck due to the ice building up. My wife and I switched seats (her ready to drive now and majorly pregnant - btw, she had to try to get the car up on the road, to no avail - ;-)). The snow was definitely coming down (across) and we sat there waiting for it to stop. We were sitting there and all of a sudden we were rammed from behind, putting the trunk of the Corona halfway into the backseat. We were not injured (wife was fine) and talked about what to do and we decided I would go out into the blizzard and ask for their insurance info. The wind was blowing from right to left hard and I was in the passenger seat so I opened the door, stepped out and POOF I was an instant snowman. I waddled over to the station wagon towing a u-haul trailer, knocked on the driver window and asked him for his insurance info. He replied "I don't have any" and rolled up his window. I waddled back to our car, shook off and climbed back inside. We talked and figured we would ask for his driver license info. I stepped back out, was an instant snow man and asked the driver for his drivers license info and he replied "I don't have one" (they were Mexican - please no haters, it was fact that most illegals were heading there to Denver. By lore, Denver was founded by a mexican family and a white family. The Mexicans settled west of 25) - so what else could we do..... couldn't see anywhere, no cell phone then (1979)....
We sat there and all of a sudden we got rammed again. The first family jack knifed their car/trailer and were sitting across the emergency lane. What we realized then, that we had our emergency flashers on (hey, we're from FL) and we were attracting idiots that were still driving in a zero visibility situation -OOPS. Well, this woman drove up the middle between our car and the trailer slamming right into the side of the jack-knifed station wagon which proceeded to push our trunk into the back seat of our car. So it is about people driving stupidly (maybe happens all the time) while they can only see 1 foot in front of their hood just to get somewhere. We were ignorant not knowing to not turn on our flashers while in a blind snowstorm.
Long story short - I alerted my insurance company to the saga and gave them the license plate of both vehicles. I had to be towed back to Las Vegas NM where the car was totaled. We took a Greyhound bus back home, which took us 3 times the time to get there than it took us to drive to Las Vegas NM.
We had Farmers Insurance at the time and we were reimbursed for all expenses and were reimbursed for the car more than I paid for it. Oh, our baby was fine and my wife wasn't injured during the wreck. BTW I tried to sell the snow chains when I got back to Elpaso to no avail. I was transferred to Sierra Vista AZ and couldn't sell them there either. Brought them back home to FL and ....
