The blizzard of 2022  left many hotel guests in northwest Nebraska stranded.

Janelle Winkelman, general manager of the Holiday Inn Express & Suites in Chadron, has been tasked with taking care of guests throughout the storm.

"I think one of the hardest parts has been telling guests that the roads are still closed," Winkelman said.

She said people can get stressed when their plans are interrupted by weather and closed roads.

"We try to make them as comfortable as possible," Winkelman said.

She said she and the staff also worked to make sure guests are as comfortable as possible. The effort included pooling resources with guests to provide evening meals. Winkelman said the Chadron area has been through storms before and 

"The best thing we can do is have conversations with our guests, see what they need," Karli Noble, front desk assistant.

The unexpected adventure of being snowed in lends to a fiction novelists imagination, of mental stress and guests who are not what they appear and the worst of humanity is shown. That has not been the case in this storm. Friendships developed out of necessity, boredom maybe, but mostly because in a tough situation, people chose to be positive and make the best of what they had. 

It is a time to swap stories, talk about home and why we're all here. Obviously, part of the story is getting home or our intended destination. Until then, there is the opportunity to show humanity has a good side. It is a time when people of different cultures and languages come together out of necessity but potentially stay connected after the fact.

In the last few days, I have seen strangers sit down to card games.

"How do you play it?"

"Let me show you."

A few hands later there is some playful bantering of who is winning and how.

There is the artist who looks out the window and sees the ripples in the snow as similar to ocean waves breaking on a warm, sandy shore. The two men in the corner learn yurts are more than huts for hunting in the high country, and a trucker learns as much as he wants to push his luck, he is probably grounded for a time yet.

This week is, to borrow the phrase, an unexpected adventure. It is one that has been an education and a time to stretch. It has, and continues to be, an opportunity to see that for all the headlines saying otherwise, there are still people who seek to help others and be a positive influence on society.

Travelers were caught in the storm on their way to a business engagement, see family, part of a job assignment. The cause varied with the person. The common thread was an unexpected gathering of people at the mercy of nature, trying to relax in a world that suddenly stopped. Each walk from the door, or the front desk, was met with an often-unspoken "what's the news?" 

Too often, the answer is not what we wanted to hear. We want to be busy, to be down the road toward our destination. When that outside force referenced in science suddenly stops us, we are forced to take note of our circumstances, and re-evaluate ourselves. We spend too much time running out the door and miss the unexpected conversations and opportunities for growth. Sometimes growth, change, comes in unexpected opportunities.