The Drive...yup--it gets its own post!

The drive to St. George to celebrate Christmas gets its very own post. Why? It was THAT eventful! We had been watching the weather for days. Everything was fine. The winter has been so mild in Colorado that there really wasn't any need for concern. Just to be extra safe, Tom took extra time off work so that our travel plans would be flexible. We figured that way we could leave early if a storm was coming...which it did. Luckily for us, the people that we were caravaning with were also flexible. We ended up leaving on Tuesday afternoon instead of early Wednesday morning to avoid the need to drive in the dark or in the snow. The plan was to leave between 3 and 4 in the afternoon and stay the night in Grand Junction (about a 4 hour drive). We left at around 3:50 and made it about an hour in safety and calm. Then Tori started to complain of a stomachache. We were in my Dad's car, so she was sitting in the middle. We figured it was just a little motion sickness and told her to close her eyes and try to rest. It wasn't....we were emptying every plastic bag in the car to try to...well...ya know. Then we hear on the radio that the tunnel is closed and there is a haz mat spill inside. "Explosive material" was in the tunnel and all traffic was diverted over Loveland Pass. Little did I know that Loveland Pass was treacherous, slow, and a single lane in each direction. As we were waiting in the painfully slow traffic approaching the pass, the car we were caravaning with got a flat tire...it took us just over an hour to fix it. Thank heaven's it was before we got to the pass! Tori had a minute to take care of her extra business outside the car too...yay! We made the 20 mile journey over the pass in about 2 hours. We are finally going a blistering 45 mph when we hit some lovely black ice (since it is now snowing, and about 10:00 PM). I threw the car into 4 wheel drive, and on we continued. Until the car just in front of the far we were caravaning with flipped...yup flipped. We got there in time to watch the two teenage boys climb out safely. Next was what I like to call "the mist of darkness" which was a fog so thick we couldn't see two lengths ahead of us, at 11:30 at night, on an icy road. SO FUN! We made it to the hotel parking lot shortly after midnight, and just in time for Liz to get sick. AAAAAAAAA! Lovely. We started out again early the next morning and came upon a boulder that had fallen in the road about 5-10 minutes before we got there. CAN THIS ACTUALLY BE HAPPENING? We made it the rest of the way with monsoon like rains as our only obstacle. The drive back was completely uneventful.