A rocky start...

Vacation day 1 - Friday - Grandpa and I go from Logan to Laketown.

I had (still have) every intention of using my phone camera to keep a good record of this vacation so I'd have something to blog about. So of course, the first thing I do? Break my phone. I mean really broken. I'll be looking for an AT&T store as soon as we get to Colorado Springs. I was shutting the back door of my car, standing too close to get good leverage, so I was pushing really hard to make sure it closed. My phone, which I usually wear on a lanyard around my neck, swung into the gap at just the wrong time and got shut in the door. Oh well, at least it wasn't someone's hand, right?

Vacation day 2 - Saturday - Mom and Dad and Grandpa and I head for Colorado.

The plan was to stop in Lakewood and leave Grandpa with uncle Alma while Mom and Dad and I continue down to Colorado Springs to stay with Heather's family for a few days before heading to Wisconsin to see Dennis' family. Well, we made it as far as Rawlins and hit a slippery spot on the freeway. Lots of fishtailing and almost going off one way and then almost going off the other way, then clipping the safety rail with the right back bumper and straightening out again... for about 2 seconds, then the fishtailing began again. No other traffic where we were, so it really could have been a lot worse. As it was, we eventually ended up off the road, and missed hitting a substantial sign post by about an inch as far as I could tell. And the snow was covering mud - so slick we couldn't get back up. We were only about 150 yards from the freeway exit to Rawlins, so we called for a tow to get us back on the road. Then the tow truck got too far off the road and was having the same problem we were... trying to go forward and ending up sliding sideways down the hill. He had one of those trucks with a bed that slants down to the street so cars can be winched right up onto the truck. It was interesting to watch how he used the bed to lever his truck back up to the road. I expressed my disappointment at not having my phone to take pictures with, and Dad pulled out his camera - hooray!

Here's the sign that we almost hit:

This shows the holes where our front tires ended up before the tow truck winched us forward a bit:

In this shot you can see how close we were to the freeway exit... made it easy for the tow truck to find us:

And here's the tow truck driver manipulating his truck bed to get himself unstuck:

One bonus about having to be towed back onto the road is that the tow truck driver told us the freeway was closed, and that if we told the folks at the motel - Quality Inn - that we were sent by his company, we'd get a discount. We would have had to stop in any case, and this way we got a great price for the night!

Vacation day 3 - Sunday - Mom and Dad and Grandpa and I head for Colorado (again).

Well, we left the motel at 7:00 this morning, and traveled on the freeway for a few miles, and then waited in line for 3 hours until they opened the gates. We pulled off side of the road behind the people in front of us, and waited... and waited.

And then the travel lanes started to fill up... and then get empty and we were still just sitting there.

Turns out that the folks who were trying to line up in the lanes were being sent back to to the back of the line because they're not allowed to park in the travel lanes.

Of course we didn't know that until we pulled out into a gap and moved up to the front of the line. Luckily there was another spot on the side of the road we were able to squeeze into and we didn't get sent back to the end. When they did finally open the gates, there was a state trooper in each lane leading the way - and they stayed at the front of the line most of the way from Rawlins to Cheyenne, keeping the traffic to a safe speed on the still quite slippery roads. So - no broken phones or off-road adventures today. It was a pretty uneventful drive to Uncle Alma's house, where we had dinner and left Grandpa, and now we're finally in Colorado Springs.

(Upon telling these adventures to my sister and saying how thankful we are that nobody else was on the road while we were fishtailing she said, "Yeah, only the idiots were on the road!") ;-)


disclaimer:What I MEANT was, only fools would be on the road in that weather! I can say that because I got stuck in a similar storm on the way to Laketown for Christmas in 2007. I'm not trying to be a brat, really I'm not, really! :-P
--Heather