Saturday morning was blissful. The kids spent their final time with the bunnies before it was time for me to return them.
Lily did yoga while I ate breakfast with the kids and my dad and Suzanne.
Then Mary joined my dad and Suzanne for the Grand Sanctuary tour where they were driven around in a shuttle for 90 minutes and told all about the sanctuary. Mary said multiple times that experience with Baps and Bappa was one of her favorite parts of her birthday Kanab trip.
After Mary left with Baps and Bappa, I returned the bunny and dropped of Lily, Lydia and Clarissa to join Mary, Baps and Bappa for the pig and goat tour. I then went back to the hotel to load everything in the car, and joined the end of the tour with Ammon. That worked out because Ammon seemed to get sickest after he’s on his feet and exerts too much. Mary loved the pigs. Here are some pictures and a video!
These are potbelly pigs related to Vietnamese potbelly pigs (I guess it’s hard to be sure of any purebred Vietnamese pigs anymore so they just call them potbellies). They used to allow pig sleepovers, but the pigs caused too much damage. Pigs need an acre or so to roam around and be active, and if they are indoors, their hyper-activity turns to destroying things. They are so cute!
We also enjoyed the goats!
Then we all had a delicious vegan lunch at the sanctuary. It was so fun to chat, and my dad was amazed by the jack-fruit in the Mexican-themed lunch. We all love that lunch so much and our bodies just feel good afterwards from all the vegetables. My dad and Suzanne brought gifts for Ammon for his birthday too, and he loved them!
And thus concluded the heaven portion of our day.
After saying good-bye to my dad and Suzanne, we hit the road where we had a hotel booked in Flagstaff. The plan was to stay the night there and then swing through the Petrified Forest on the way home the next day.
I haven’t mentioned this yet, but it was very cold in Kanab. Highs were in the 40s and at night I think it was in the 20s or lower. Temperatures were similar as we were driving south to Flagstaff. We hit very light snow at a couple of points, but nothing that stuck. Then, about 10 miles south of the Utah-Arizona boarder we started climbing a summit. I’m not sure what it’s called, but it might be marble canyon.
The whole way up the roads were clear, except near the very top, I started to see a couple of snow-patches. It was not actively snowing. I slowed the car to be safe, but did not expect at all what was waiting for me around the next bend. Just after crossing the summit, I turned a corner, probably going 35, and right in front of me was 100 feet of snowy ice. There was a truck pulling a horse trailer 50 feet to the left and in front of me that was stuck on the side of the road. I gently hit the brakes so I wouldn’t break into a skid, and gradually pressed them more firmly to try to control my stop. While I was doing that, I started sliding directly towards the truck. I did the mental math and calculated that we would hit the truck. No one wold get hurt. I’d probably hit it going 3-5 miles an hour and we’d both have some body damage that I would be responsible for. As we slowly slid towards the truck, the car jolted to a stop a foot and a half from the truck. I couldn’t believe it. What a blessing! Since we were now in the middle of the road, and not sure how we would drive without sliding right into the truck, I got out of the car, also telling our kids to get out of the car. Then the near nightmare happened.
At this point, I had stepped out of the car and Lily was still in the car and we looked behind us (Lily using the mirrors). Coming at us at about 30-40 miles per hour was an 18-wheeler I had recently passed. It had hit the ice and was sliding towards us. The whole trailer was diagonal and taking up the whole road as it slid towards us. Lily and I processed what was happening in the exact same way. Our mental math told us that the truck would not stop in time, that it would ram straight into our beautiful family and that this was the end. We started screaming at the kids to stay in the car thinking that if they were in the process of exiting, that would be much more dangerous than if they were in their seats when they got hit. Then, the truck came sliding to a stop and stopped about 8 feet from our car. I don’t know if the trailer going diagonal helped the truck slide to stop, especially since the back of it seemed to be catching on a snowbank. I don’t know if the driver was particularly skilled and he navigated the situation with expert precision. All I know is Lily and I though our kids were all going to die, and us with them, and it was the scariest moment of both of our lives, without any competition.
Both of the truck drivers were exceptionally kind. Our kids sat in the heated truck pulling the horse trailer while we figured out what to do. We couldn’t go back (even though that is what we wanted to do because we were so scared and shook up) because we’d have to turn around and try to go up the ice sheet and also, the semi was completely blocking the road. The people with us (who barely fit between our car and the truck pulling the horse trailer) helped push our care away from the truck pulling the horse trailer while I slowly put on the gas. This aimed us correctly and we finished going down the canyon at a very, very slow pace.
We heard that the road was soon shut down. Multiple people were stuck up there. It was a complete mess. Lily and I were both dealing with it in our own way. Lily was balling and highly traumatized. She was also upset at me for not being more assertive about our family’s safety and her anger was warranted. She is the beating heart of our family, and she had almost just witnessed putting her treasures through horrific pain, and losing everything. Also, she had mentioned concerns about driving to Flagstaff because she knew there could be snow there and I didn’t feel worried.
I was focused on just getting us to Flagstaff, and frankly not processing much else in the moment. Lily studied a map, and we had no better, safer alternative than to just follow our original plan. I was very, very quiet on the way to Flagstaff and just laser focused on getting the family there safely. When we finally got into our hotel and we got the kids down, I broke down. I talked with Lily, but I also spent a lot of time alone. I processed all the emotions of almost putting my kids and Lily through tremendous pain and death, of almost losing them all. Of the fact that I just didn’t take the risks of winter driving seriously enough and how that was my fault. It all hurt tremendously, and yet, the gratitude and relief I felt was also immense. It was a very emotional night. I thought very hard about what lesson I could take away from this. I concluded that planning trips in winter months is just a bad idea. It takes so much effort to organize and plan everything that even if weather is bad, it will be too tempting to try to go, even if weather is bad, and in winter is too often bad. So I concluded that south of our home, we will not plan any overnight driving trips November-March, and North of our home, we will not plan any overnight driving trips October-April. We might do something last-minute if we confirm the roads are perfect, but we are done with planning winter-driving trips in advance. After time alone, I joined Lily for bed.
This is a video I took at a dinner restaurant in Flagstaff called Wildflower Bread Company. I was just feeling so shook up and grateful that the kids were alive and I just started videoing them while we waited for food.