JEANNA DUERSCHERL The Roanoke Times

Rob Mart pushes a cart full of plants to his minivan Sunday after checking out of the La Quinta in Salem. He and his wife are relocating from Texas to New Jersey and tried to route their travel around the weekend snowstorm.

JEANNA DUERSCHERL The Roanoke Times

Glen Knobel wipes the snow off his rental car Sunday in Salem. The Florida man said that he had never seen snow before this weekend.

Rob and Cheryl Mart rerouted their 1,500-mile journey from Texas to New Jersey -- ultimately by way of the Roanoke Valley -- twice to avoid the weekend's snowstorm.

While she drove, he connected a cellphone and a laptop computer to monitor the weather forecast online. The Marts went through Tuscaloosa, Ala., instead of Memphis, Tenn., to bypass ice and snow.

"That is the beauty of the Internet now," Rob Mart said.

The couple, with Rudy the miniature schnauzer, stopped overnight Saturday at La Quinta Inns & Suites in Salem. Cheryl Mart said changing the route added about three hours to the trip.

Hotel staff said about 30 rooms were booked Saturday night, some of those snowed in from Friday night. Unlike during the Dec. 18 snowstorm, the staff at La Quinta and several other lodging venues along Interstate 81 in the Roanoke Valley did not report an influx of guests because of the weather.

"People were more prepared to get off the road this time, I guess," said Wendy Wright, a front desk clerk.

The December storm, which fell on a busy holiday travel weekend, left hundreds of motorists stranded overnight on the interstate. Friday's snow started after dark, giving travelers more time to plan, settle in for the night or reach their destination before travel became hazardous.

The Marts, who are relocating to New Jersey for Rob's job in the pharmaceutical industry, packed their minivan with fragile items, such as houseplants, that could not be hauled on the moving truck.

"We couldn't leave the plants in the car overnight," Rob Mart said.

He made two trips with a hotel luggage cart to repack green potted plants of all sizes into the vehicle.

Cheryl Mart and another traveler, Glen Knobel, conversed over a continental breakfast Sunday morning. Neither of the two knew that standing windshield wipers upright was protocol when parking a car before or during a snowstorm to keep the wipers from freezing to the windshield, but they saw that others in the hotel parking lot had done it and followed the lead.

"I guess you are supposed to," Cheryl Mart said.

Knobel, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., resident, is in town on business. The housekeeping management company he works for has a job at Lewis-Gale Medical Center in Salem.

"It was my first experience with snow," he said. "It was pretty, but you go a little stir-crazy."

Knobel said he was stuck in the hotel Sunday. Not wanting to venture out in the car he rented, he walked to a nearby fast-food restaurant and convenience store.

"That is the other thing I realized," Knobel said Sunday morning, as he crossed the hotel parking lot with a broom in hand. "When you are walking and think it is a puddle, it is not."

Knobel made two new friends over the weekend: snow and black ice.