I had mentioned in a previous post that Kyle and I had a trip planned. It was not an uneventful trip. We had decided to leave the girls at home. Jenae stayed with Kyle's parents and Aubree stayed at my parents house. It was really hard on me to leave them home, but the way the week worked out I am so thankful they were not with us.
Kyle and I left home Monday evening around 5:00 it is about 15 or 16 hours to Pocatello. If all had went according to plan we would have been to Pocatello Tuesday morning. Kyle did not have to be there until Wednesday night but we went a day early so he could help throw the steers that they would be using in rodeo. All was going well until we hit a Spring blizzard near Rowlin's WY. We were driving along in rain. When I saw a snow plow on the road I knew it was not good. We drove about a mile from where we saw the snow plow and hit a white out. Kyle probably had to drive 15 miles until we made it to an exit. It was about 4 in the morning at this time and decided to wait until daylight to head out again. We took off Tuesday morning and the interstate was a solid sheet of ice and we have a 2 wheel drive dully pickup. It is absolutely worthless on snow and ice. We were only going between 30-45 miles per hour but kept plugging away at our trip. There were so many vehicles in the ditch and wrecks I was getting pretty nervous. There was a wreck up ahead of us so traffic was stop and go. We were headed up a huge hill loaded down with horses. We had to come to a stop and when we went to take off again we just started spinning. There was no going forward we were stuck!!!! We were right next to a rest area and I am not sure how it happened but Kyle managed to get it pulled into the rest area. I am sure it was with some help from above. The rest area was full of trucks that had pulled off the interstate. When Kyle was pulling in he dropped the outside wheel of the pickup off the pavement and then we were really really stuck! It was 20 degrees with 30-45 mph wind and the windchill was zero! We unloaded the horses and we had 4 really nice truckers come over and push the pick up out. It took about 20-30 minutes. I had not packed gloves or a winter coat and just had on a pair of black knit pants, after all it is April and it was very nice outside when we left home. I had never been so cold in all my life. My joints were aching. I think I finally have an understanding for what chilled to the bone means. Shortly after we pulled into the rest area they shut down the interstate. We were going nowhere!!! Usually I am the queen of packing snacks and drinks for road trips, but since the girls were not with us I tried to simplify my packing and figured we would get our snacks and drinks along the way when we would stop to fill up. Little did I know we would get stranded in a rest area with no vending or pop machines. I had thrown in some microwave popcorn and Kyle had 3 cereal bars, and a couple packages of little crackers. We had 2 bottles of water, 2 cans of pop and 1 bottle of Gatorade. We had not stopped for breakfast before we got stopped. The wind blew all night. There was no good place to for the horses and they were so cold when we would unload them that we ended up leaving them on the trailer all night. They would kick and stomp after standing in there awhile then we would unload them and walk them around for a while. They were always ready to jump back on the trailer. They would stand quiet for awhile then start kicking and stomping. I could not blame them it was a miserable situation. I was really worried one of them would colic and we would be stranded with a colicing horse in the middle of nowhere. Luckily we did not have to deal with that. I am not someone who has panic attracts but it was really getting to me. It was such a helpless feeling to know we were stuck there with nothing we could do about it. We did our best to try to sleep and prayed that daylight would bring clear weather. I have to stop writing for now. I will post more about our trip at a later time.
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