So scary!

We got home from a trip to St. George last night and instead of unpacking my suitcase and doing laundry, I'm sitting here blogging. Oh well, it'll wait for me, right? Last Thursday, we left on what we thought would be a very uneventful, but fun trip with our friends Gail & Jay to St. George. I checked the weather before and it said "light snow" so no worries. Well, just as we got out of the Beaver pass, we noticed the snow started sticking to the road and cars were speeding past us. The visibility was pretty poor and all of a sudden we saw cars stopping in front of us. Ron put on the brakes and we starting skidding but he got stopped in time. Then we braced ourselves for any cars behind us that might not stop, but lucky for us they did. Everyone was stopped and a highway patrolman said we wouldn't be going anywhere soon, so we got out and walked around. Just ahead of us a UPS truck jacknifed and hit a Penske truck which ran over the front of this car. The people were all right but pretty shaken up.

We waited about an hour and talked to the highway patrolman. He said there was an accident ahead of us that had a fatality and an oil spill from a semi, so the freeway would be closed for at least 7 hours. We felt really bad about the fatality and started to realize how fortunate we were not to have been a few feet ahead since we could have easily been hit by this semi. We noticed a few cars were going to a turnaround a little ways ahead of us and going to the other side of the freeway. We asked the patrolman if we could do that and he said to go ahead and go about a mile where we could go on an overpass and drive along a frontage road which would take us past the wreckage and back on the freeway to St. George. So we did that and drove past all the wrecks and we couldn't believe what we saw. There were about 30 cars and semis either off the road or crashed into each other. We heard later, everyone was stuck there for at least 8 hours. We felt really thankful that we were safe and sound. It really makes you realize how fragile life is. After our harrowing experience, we still had a lot of fun with our friends. We played tennis, went to the Parade of Homes, played lots of cards, and ate out every chance we got. Glad we were able to give them a little thrill on the way down. We won't forget this trip very soon and are feeling very grateful for a good outcome. I don't think I'll believe the weather report again when they say "light snow!"