Rules of the Road

For those of you who don't know, we are in Edgerton, Minnesota right now. We left Friday around 5 pm and after stopping in Madison, WI for the night, we got here around 2:30 pm on Saturday. It was NOT a fun ride. We kept calling Darin's family to see how the weather was by them, and they kept telling us "As long as it doesn't get any worse, you should be able to make it". It got worse. We still made it, but it is not a trip I want to repeat.

Today all the churches in the area were cancelled. We were under a blizzard warning for most of the afternoon. For some reason, we decided it would be ok to head to Darin's sister who lives about 20 minutes away. There is a reason they tell people to stay off the road during this kind of weather, which we soon found out. As soon as we were out of town, we had a hard time seeing the road. It was so windy and there were drifts in both lanes of traffic and the snow was blowing so much that all of a sudden we'd be in a white out. We kept going.

We were about 5 miles away from Daci's place when Darin had to find a driveway to turn into. Our power steering had gone out and the lights were starting to go out as well. It turns out a belt had come loose, probably from all the snow that was packed under the van from the drifts we went over yesterday. Darin and his dad braved the cold and ended up taking the belt off. The van started up, so we decided to keep driving. NOT a good idea. About a half mile down the road, the van crapped out. We were able to coast down a hill for a little bit, then we just stopped. So, now we were sitting half on and half off of the road. We couldn't get all the way off because we would have ended up in a snow filled ditch. We had NO heat and it got cold fast. We were all a bit concerned about the low visibility because if a car had come up behind us, they probably would have crashed into our van. Thankfully, Daci's husband, Justin, was able to come and pull us back to their house with his truck. We just had to wait for him to finish pulling a calf!

Darin and Justin were able to get the belt back on, but we are going to have to take the van in as the heat isn't working. Not ideal in this weather. So, if you are heading out on the road, make sure you listen to all those "worry warts" and have a blanket, water, food, flashlight, and whatever else you might need in case you get stuck somewhere. Better yet, just stay home!