Road Trip

Jan 7, 2007
Current mood:excited

Road Trip!!! :)

Blizzard of 2006, State of Emergency in Denver. 

This trip has literally been "a trip"!! It's been a cross between the movies, Twilight Zone and Serendipity.  It all started the morning of December 20^th, the boys and I were scheduled to leave Denver on a day and half trip to the Olympic peninsula in Washinton so we could spend Christmas with family. God had other plans. In the form of a category five snowstorm. Then another, and another. We finally left the morning of January 6^th with clear skies and an unbeknownst adventure lying before us.

After driving through an avalanche and a sudden, unexpected blizzard in the Spanish Fork Canyon, we arrived just north of Salt Lake City in the town of Bountiful shortly after midnight. The temperature was beyond bitter cold. My toes were freezing, my fingers were white and our noses were numb. Within minutes, the hotel room was toasty and tropical. I fell asleep with visions of white sandy beaches, cocktails with little pink umbrellas, baby oil and...........

Bright eyed and bushy tailed at 7am in  Bountiful, Utah. 

A few hours later, at the crack of dawn, I dragged the boys out of bed with the excitement of being in Coeur d'Alene by late lunchtime. It was only nine hours away, ( seven doing the speed limit my way) and a piece of cake to drive. I had visions of Tito's minestrone soup and Gerda's meatballs smothered in her German marinara tomato sauce. Gerda is 5'1", 76 years old and still talks with such a thick German accent that you can barely understand what she's saying.  She has made this infamous soup and her 1lb meatballs for the Coeur d'Alene resort since it opened in 1982. She's a Northern Idaho icon. And I've dreamt of her cooking since leaving 2 years ago. My mouth melts with the thought of dipping her hot homemade garlic bread in that soup. And I'd travel five hundred miles in a day to get to it.

In the meantime, 20 miles north of where we slept, Squeaky, our 96 Volvo, decided that he really liked Utah and wanted to take a break……on a Sunday. Try to find ANTHING open on a Sunday in Utah and you have found a miracle! Well, we found that miracle…….in an Auto Parts store and a man.
After hitting the only auto store open besides Wal-mart and picking up new spark plugs, spark plug wires, that little thing that measures the gap, an air filter, alternator and tools to fix it,  the clerk asked if I was going to be my own mechanic. I told him I had no choice, that we were 3 weeks late getting to Washington for Christmas and I had a date with Gerda for lunch. I told the clerk that if he gave me a Volvo book on Squeaky, I'd figure out how to fix him and asked if I could use his parking lot during my fearless attempt. 

A man who was at the cash register next to us overheard. He said that after he picked up his wife from Wal-mart, he would be more than happy to fix our car. He gave us the address to their house, which was 10 miles back the way we had just came, and told us to go on ahead and they would meet us there shortly. We drove to this breathtaking home on top of a mountain. The driveway was at a 45-degree angle and rested on a slight plateau on the side of the hill. We walked inside, up the stairway to an oversized living room with cathedral ceilings and floor to ceiling windows that took in the view of the Salt Lake and the valley. As Bill labored on our car, his wife entertained us with stories, a warm fire, chocolates and a big screen TV. She told us that she was born and raised in Arvada, Colorado and graduated from CSU where she met this intriguing man who was a mountain climber and moved to Utah to live on the side of mountain to be with him. I can see why. This man had a permagrin etched on his face since the moment we met him. He exuded compassion, selflessness and warmth. Three and half hours later we were back on the road. They gave us their cell numbers and told us to call if we had any problems along the way. We were golden………for 352.4 miles.

Bedtime in Dillon

It was nightfall when we reached the border of Idaho and Montana. And yet another snowstorm was building along the mountains as we ascended into the pass. The road was icy and visibility was limited by the snow blowing across the highway. It became harder and harder to distinguish what were the snow banks lining the road and the road itself. As soon as I spied the taillights of a Safeway semi, I tailgated. For miles. Until Squeaky decided to be temperamental again and throw another fit. This time the timing was much worse than being in Utah on a Sunday. This time we were at 9000 feet in the middle of a mountain pass with the nearest town still thirty six miles ahead and no cell reception. We slowed down to a barely moveable twenty miles an hour and finally reached Dillon, Montana an hour and half later. Whew! That was one of the worst white knuckle, deep prayer driving I've ever experienced.