A Very Scary Experience

As I said in my last post, my mom and sister are here visiting Collin and me for the weekend. They arrived safely on Saturday morning, I picked them up at the airport and then we headed to the mall for some lunch and a little shopping. Collin had a meeting until noon so we decided we would just hang out until he got finished and then head home to see what he wanted to do. We got back to the apartment and Heather and I made some red velvet cupcakes. After we finished with that we talked a while about what we wanted to do for the rest of the day. We decided we would make a quick trip up to Breckenridge for a little shopping and some dinner.

Things started out fine. The sun was out in Denver and weather.com said it was partly sunny in Breck. Once we got to Georgetown it started to sprinkle a little and soon after that the sprinkle turned into snow. We were still cruising along, in the left lane, fine at this point but all of the sudden I hear Collin say "Oh Man" and feel the car starting to slide and swerve. The next thing I know we are starting to spin. We do a 180 across the right lane of traffic and slide onto the side of the road, which thankfully was on the mountain side and not the cliff side. We come to an abrupt stop with a bang. While it's not necessary to state, I'll just say I was FREAKED out!!!! I don't know how we didn't hit another car. But that's not the whole story. After coming to a stop we made sure everyone was ok, which thankfully we were. Collin then put the car back in drive to try and get back on the road but all we got were spinning wheels. Collin, my mom, and sister then got out to see what was going on. It turns out that we were sitting in about 3 feet of snow, in a rear wheel drive car. Not a good combination. Oh and just in case you were wondering the thing that made us stop was actually the mountain and we have a huge dent along the side of the car to prove it. But back to the issue at hand...getting our car out of the snow. We tried for a while to go back and forth but that didn't work. Collin, my mom and sister tried to push but that didn't work. They tried to dig us out but didn't work. Oh and I should also mention that while trying to dig us out another car spun out on the same spot and came straight at my sister who had her back turned at the moment but thankfully they somehow missed her and our car as well.

So at this point we are starting to freak out even more. Here we are stuck on the side of the road at 10,000+ feet in the freezing cold with no idea how we are going to get out. Cars keep whizzing by I'm sure saying, "oh look at those poor people" and then carrying on their way. Thankfully after some time (which I'm pretty sure was a lot shorter than it felt like) a car that just happened to be packed with 5 fairly large men pulled over. Collin calls them "our angels." They got out of their car and proceeded to push us out of the snow getting covered in snow and mud despite the fact that they were all dressed very nicely in slacks and button up shirts. They didn't complain or anything. Honestly, they were just laughing the whole time. Thankfully, they were able to help us get out, get turned around (because at that point we were still facing the opposite way of traffic due to the 180 we did), and get back on the highway.

We wanted to turn around and just go back home at this point but we noticed that the highway was closed on the other side due to the bad weather and cars were backed up for miles. So we decided it would be best to just take it slow and go the rest of the way to Breck to wait for the traffic to clear up. We made it there fine and had a good time shopping and eating dinner and then headed decided we had waited long enough to head back home. There was still a lot of traffic so it took us about 2 1/2 hours to get home but thankfully we made it back safely. To say the least I was a nervous wreck.

I know it was God that protected us last night. Things could have been SO much worse. We could have hit other cars, we could have flipped, we could have gotten injured as well as many other things. Honestly, while it was all happening I just kept thinking oh my gosh, the baby. I am just so thankful that we were all safe. It was honestly one of the scariest experiences of my life. Thank God for his protection and for sending those men to help us out.

On a little happier note...here are a few pics of our short time in Breck.