Merry Christmas

Last Saturday morning we woke up and were out the door by 6:00 AM to start our trek down to SLC. We wanted to make sure we were only driving in daylight, as we knew we would hit some pretty rough mountain passes that would probably be snowing. The plan was to drive from Surrey to Middleton ID, were we would stay with our friends.

We were making great time, we went through the Snoqulamie pass...which we really expected to be a lot worse than it was...and headed towards Idaho. We really thought things were going great until we hit Le Grande Oregon. It was then EVERYTHING went wrong. They had closed the highway due to 5 jack-knifed semi's. They said it would be closed for at least a couple of hours. We got there at 2:oo PM and it had closed around 1:30. So we headed over to Denny's to eat and wait it out.. When we arrived at Denny's there was NO snow, when we left Denny's about an hour later...there was probably about 2 inches of snow on the ground!! CRAZY!!

We then headed over to Starbucks to pick up wireless and see if we could find out if the highway was open yet. To our surprise it was!! It was now about 4:00 PM. We decided we better just get going and take it slow, because it was now a good blizzard out there.

The weather was INSANE!! It was foggy and snowy and just NO FUN! As we were driving along we saw a flashing sign saying "curvy roads next 10 miles"

As we approached the first curve, we slammed on the brakes and SLID...I kid you not the ice was about 1 inch thick and VERY slick!

Every time we came around a curve it was parking lot...there were semi's ALL over the road and they were in the way, therefore no one could get through. Se we would have to just sit there and wait for the semi to chain up so he could get out of the way...it was crazy! And this literally happened at every curve in the road. Emma was a trooper!! She was wonderful, seriously the best kid ever!! When we stopped the car we would bundle her up in her coat and her and daddy went and played in the snow...or she just played inside the car, she was just happy to be out of the car.

This picture here is the line up behind us, obviously the pictures don't do this experience justice, but it was the best we could do as it was dark.

This was the front...check out that ice!

We FINALLY made it out of this mountain pass...it took forever. We went about 1.7 miles in and hour and a half!! We were 120 miles from our destination when we arrived at 2:00 PM (pacific time) and we made it to our friends home in Middleton ID at 12:15 AM. Again, we left at 6:00 AM that morning. So we were in our car for 18 hours...the whole drive to Utah only takes 14.5 hours...so yes, 18 hours only to get to Middleton was A LONG TIME!!

The next day we left around 12 noon and got into Draper around 5. MUCH BETTER!! We are happy to be down here and enjoy the Holidays with family!!

Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year!

Love,

The Gordon-Smiths