The Drive Out

It is a bit more than 1000 miles from our house in Wichita, KS to John's parent's house in Provo, UT. The drive generally takes between 16 and 18 hours. It took 21 hours of driving to get out there this time. We were in an ice storm through most of Kansas until about the last 70 miles when we drove into a blizzard. It was dark and our windshield wipers were so covered in ice from the ice storm, that they no longer worked at all. It was pitch black, I was driving, and I could not see 2 feet in front of the car. John noticed that he could tell where the bumps that let you know you have gone off the road by the way the snow clumped on them were, so John looked intently out his window telling me to go more left or right to stay on the road, while I drove between 5 and 10 mph. When several trucks and cars went off the road on the other side of the highway the headlights of the jammed traffic helped to light our way. For the most part we were the only car on our side of the highway. We aren't sure if a truck jack knifed and blocked all of the traffic behind us, or if the authorities closed off the highway just after us. When we finally made it to a safe stop, we immediately went to Wal-mart and bought new windshield wipers. Then we got dinner and a hotel. We were just so exhausted after the slow drive through Kansas we felt that we would be safer to get some rest before we drove the other 700 miles. We did something that we never do: we went to sleep pretty much right away and got up at 6am to get an early start. We were really blessed to be both safe from bodily harm and to have not been in a car accident. Through the ice storm we saw 5 trucks and 3 cars off the road, and then in the 40 miles of the blizzard we saw at least 7 trucks and 4 cars either jack knifed or in a ditch.

The next day we got through half of Wyoming with Johnny annoying people for his own entertainment as our only trouble. The second half of Wyoming we were in snow and had to slow down again. By Rock Springs it was blizzarding again and we had to drive slowly. But we were grateful that they did not close the highway. It was blizzarding until we got to Provo Canyon and then the snow just stopped and we drove the last 45 minutes in relative calm. It was such a relief to arrive safely in Provo. Thinking back, it seems pretty miraculous that we were able to drive through probably 500 or more miles of storm and to have seem vehicle after vehicle off the road, and we did not even slip or lose control once.