I would say that we made it safely to Georgia, but as I think about the 30 hour drive out here, there are probably more instances in which we were not safe. So, I rephrase that statement; We made it to Georgia in one piece.
Our epic adventure started with a trip to Colorado Spring to see my sister Kristen and her family. We figured making a stop there would be wise because we were able to break up the 30 hour drive with some home cookin', cute kids, warm beds, and...a blizzard. That's right, we went to bed in the 60 degree weather only to wake up and find that my nieces' school had been cancelled due to an overnight snow storm. Thinking that the skies would clear up quickly, we ate a big breakfast and set out for Saint Louis, our next stopping point before Georgia. About 30 miles outside of Colorado Springs, which in the sideways snow ended up being about an hour out, my anti-traction control started locking my tires when I tried to accelerate. I called Devin freaking out and we decided to see what would happen. Unfortunately, turning off traction control means giving your car a mind of its own. My car decided to take that opportunity to fly off the freeway into a 15+ foot ditch. Needless to say I was a bit more than hysterical. Devin calmed me down and he and Joe (one of the other techs that followed me down the ditch) were able to reverse my car down the ditch until the ditch leveled with the freeway. Considering my car hit a pole on its way down, my car suffered minor scratches and cracks to the bottom of the bumper. No biggie! I just can't believe my car didn't roll!
You would think that a story like that would be the end of the life threatening adventures for one road trip, but then you would be wrong. We picked the perfectly wrong weekend to travel cross country, because that same stupid storm followed us all the way to Tennessee. Luckily in Kansas all we got were high winds that slowed us down a little bit. We didn't quite make it to Saint Louis the second night due to our adventure earlier that day, but we got close. At about 1:30 am we decided that 14 hours was enough for one day and stopped in a town out in the boonies. Unfortunately, every baseball team, business conference, and expo decided to stay in the exact town we stopped in. Deliriously tired, we searched for a non-smoking room (which turned out to be pretty impossible in hick-town Kansas) with vacancy. We finally found one and got a good night's sleep and shoved off again. Next stop, Georgia!
Our third day of driving brought us relentless rainstorms. For those of you who don't know,torrential downpour in Kansas and Missouri very easily turns into Tornadoes. Well, that very thunderstorm that we were driving in did indeed turn into a tornado that touched down just off the freeway 10 miles behind us (we didn't see it, but other travelers that trickled into the gas station to wait out the storm with us had!) You may have seen stories on the news about the tornadoes that killed over 10 people the last week of April...yeah, now close your eyes and imagine driving through that! My mom, who has always been known to have the weather channel constantly on when one of her children is traveling, was on the line updating us to the second on the happenings of the storm. We all decided to shove off and try to get out in front of the storm. If we could make it 30 more miles in the rain, we would be out of the storm. Slowly we crept through the rain and made it to Nashville and had mostly blue skies for the next couple of hours. The rest of the trip (all 4 hours of it) was uneventful.
Sorry about the lengthy story, but it was a lengthy drive! I'm just wondering what will happen on the trip back to Utah!
