A no good very bad day

What started off as being an exciting road trip turned into one of the most horrible days ever. Yesterday Matt and I loaded up the car with all of our Christmas presents and ski’s and started our trip to Utah in our rear wheel drive vehicle (first mistake). We got about 40 miles down the road and had to pull over to put chains on our car. At this point we were still pretty optimistic. We figured that once the chains were on it would be smooth sailing. Right? Ummm, not so much. About 10 minutes later our chain on the right side broke and did some pretty serious damage to our rims which will have to be replaced (first big expense). So there we are driving along with one chain and the roads were getting worse and worse and our car was sliding more and more. Then POP! There went the other chain. We were able to salvage the chain on the left tire but knew that we had to pull over or we would probably die.


So we slid (literally) into a cozy little hotel just off the freeway called the Columbia Gorge Hotel. This was the best part of the experience because it was like a winter wonderland. It was honestly the most picture perfect hotel I had ever been too. They had delicious hot apple cider and a cozy fireplace to warm us up from the harsh winter storm. At this point we were pretty heart broken. We knew that we weren’t going to be able to make it to my family’s house in Toquerville and I was crushed. But we tried to make the best of it so we decided that we would just stay there for the night and buy plane tickets to fly out of Portland into Salt Lake (big expense two) the next day.



So we woke up early the next morning to find an extra foot of snow on the ground. Although beautiful it was very discouraging, especially when we found that our piece of crap car couldn’t get out of the hotel parking lot. So we called Enterprise and rented a car so that we could get home (extra expense number three). We ended up just leaving our car at the hotel and will go and get it when the weather gets better…who knows when that will be. There was so much snow at the rental car place that we had to be plowed out by a bronco.

Once we got on the road we were happy that we were no longer in our Infiniti. We would have surely died…the roads were absolutely horrible. They hadn’t been plowed and cars were sliding off the road everywhere. What a mess! Once we got back to our apartment we pulled up the internet to find that all of the flights going out of Portland International airport were being cancelled and the news was predicting snow snow…more snow…ice storms…freezing rain... and heavy winds. At this point we both just wanted to crawl in a whole and cry. But we tried to be optimistic and say “well at least now we get to watch the BYU basketball game and the Las Vegas Bowl football game”. Well as you all know BYU lost both games. What a terrible no good very bad day. It makes the song “I’ll be home for Christmas” all the more meaningful to me. We were SO excited to come home for Christmas and now…I don’t think we are going to make it. What a sad day.