Our Drive Home From Californ-i-a

FAR TOO LATE, WAY OVER DUE, ALMOST NOT WORTH SHARING, but for my sake, I'm posting it :)

Okay, I've really got to get this all down before I forget too many more of the details. Our drive home was the longest drive ever! A lot of what happened was so frustrating and scary at the time, but we can't help but laugh when we talk about the irony of all of it now.
First of all, we were in denial of having to leave so we took our time and got off to a late start. Once we got passed Reno the storms began. We started working our way up the mountain through Tahoe when the storming started. Any of you that have done Donnor's Pass in the winter I'm sure would agree with me when I say: FLY!!! It's so much more worth it... or at least be smart enough to follow the forecast a little closer before it's too late.

before we knew what was coming...

So we got to the "chains required" part of the drive and put our never-been-used chains on the car. The chains actually slid on pretty easily; we were pleasantly surprised and moved forward with smiles. Once we get going again the chains start to make a loud-not good noise. We kept going a little ways to see if maybe we just needed to pick up a little speed. After a while, we knew that wouldn't cut it so we switched, adjusted, tightened, and loosened those chains about 10 times before giving up and just taking the chains off altogether. At that point, the chains had already kind of beat up a little of the car frame and we weren't willing to risk it doing more. So we proceeded without the chains, VERY cautiously. At this point, we were 8 hours into the drive, but had really only traveled the distance equivalent to a typical 4 hour drive. We drove the remainder of the pass at about 20 MPH doing our best without our chains. Meanwhile, this stress caused me to drink 2 DCs and a bottle of water. NO BUENO with a small bladder. We finally get to an exit and there is a line out the door at every location (apparently I'm not the only one that relies on drinks to relieve stress sometimes). Anyway, once that was all taken care of I was a whole new woman! We carried on with some clear roads for about an hour, traveling at about 70 MPH. That is where all of our dreams were shattered. For the remainder of our drive, we basically traveled with the storm.

Manly-Man putting on our chains

By the time we hit the Utah boarder we were driving PacMan, the only ones on the road with about 1 foot distance of visibility. SUPER SCARY! We were driving about 20-25 MPH and getting nowhere fast. Finally after all of the stress of the night, 2:00 a.m. rolls around and even though we were almost to Tooele, we knew we weren't going to make it home that night.  After calculating our road conditions, we figured it would be another 3 hours before we would get home. So, we stopped off at a hotel in Tooele to catch a few hours of sleep before we had to head back out early for Brad to get to work on time. We finally went to sleep a little after 3 and were up again by 7:00. It was a nice, much needed, little break and we were refreshed enough to go after enjoying their complimentary breakfast. We were SO thrilled to finally be back in Alpine only one short hour later!

some of our best visibility the whole drive - Tooele on the horizon!
oh yeah, our windshield wiper fluid was frozen too :)

However, the "fun" doesn't stop there. So we went straight to Jason and Shaylee's house to have someone to share our adventure with. We just laughed the whole time, realizing how pathetic it was, yet how grateful we were that we made it out alive and safe. The time comes for us to head to the house so Brad can go to work. We arrive at our home only to realize, every door is locked and our garage code is not working. We walk around the house and check all the windows... everything: locked. So we climb back into the car to go back to Shay's to get our spare key. Don't worry, our car died in the five minutes we had been at the house! Ahh! So us, being  the unprepared people we are, don't have jumper cables. So we search the Kia frantically and found a basic set. Yes! Then we realize, crap we need a car to jump the Kia. Oh wait, there's Betty (my little blue car) in the driveway literally covered in a foot a snow and we don't have a scraper on hand. So we used our sleeves to clean up the car enough to drive over to Shays to get our spare key and then to later jump the Kia. (Luckily I had my keys to the blue car with me instead of where they usually are in the house). We go over to Shays to get our key and while Brad is grabbing the key, I am scraping the ice and snow off Betty a little more so we can at least be legal. Suddenly the windshield wiper flies off completely. Brad just looks at it and throws it in the car. At this point he's a little on edge and I'm just laughing like a drunk from living off of no sleep and not knowing whether I should really be laughing or crying. I just wanted to get in the house to shower and sleep! We get back to the house and finally got into the house. Hallelujah! I open the garage and we start just unloading everything into the house. Then we realize we still haven't jumped the Kia. Brad has to get to work, and I have to pick up my brother, Zac at the airport in a few hours so we need both cars. So we finally get the cars lined up to jump and the jumper cables literally just broke in Brad's hands. What??? All we could do was laugh.

attaching cables

Brad shocked: the cable just broke off

Brad's failed attempt to jerry-rig the cables

Fortunately we have smart upstairs neighbors and we had to rummage through some of their stuff in the garage until we finally found some cables. After jumping the car 3 separate times we finally got it charged long enough to make start back up. (we were worried about letting it run for too long because both of the cars were past empty:s) It was such a relief watching Brad drive away because I knew the worst was over. Although I felt terrible that he had to spend that whole day at work after living off of very little sleep and a lot of stress. 

I spent the day doing all of our laundry, cleaning our house, crying a little, and trying to help create a peaceful environment for Brad to come home to. Mission accomplished and we ended the night relieved it was all over, but grateful for the unforgettable memories and our life-lesson learned: never drive through Donnor Pass in the winter!
I know this is all jumbled with a lot of grammatical errors and very little fluency, etc. But I had to get it down on paper and if I spend anymore time on it, I might just give up on catching up altogether.


Hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed reminiscing. :)