At about 2 am on May 17, our adventure quickly came to a screaming halt. I literally mean screaming. That would be me screaming (and one of the two times I have cussed out loud in front of my husband), as I tried to regain control of our new mini van. Yes, I had fallen asleep. We ended up on the side of the road in Ogden Canyon between Henefer and Morgan, upside down . Just 30 minutes away from the first stop of our journey-my parents home.
What a rude way to wake up my family on the beginning of our adventure.
Parker started screaming. Lexi was crying. Dylan was wimpering. And they were all wondering why they were hanging upside down.
The rest of the story is kind of a blur, but this is what I remember.
Rob scrambled out of the car to go attend to Parker who seemed to be the most upset. With good reason. Parker's head had been cut. While Rob was attending to Parker, I briefly looked for the flashlight we keep in the car and a cell phone to call 911. However, everything had been tossed and thrown and nothing could be found. I climbed back to Lexi and unbuckled her. That is when I remembered she had taken off her shirt earlier in the evening claiming she was just too hot and of course her shoes were thrown ...............somewhere. I then went to Dylan and carefully unbuckled my hanging child and handed him to Rob through the broken window.
It was 40 degrees in the canyon that night and Lexi was cold waiting for me to find her shirt and shoes. Meanwhile, Nora Jones is still playing through the speakers. I reached over and turned her off. I haven't listened to her since.
I think eventually Rob took Lexi out and wrapped her in a blanket.
When I had finally climbed out of our broken van, I noticed that during this time, people had stopped to help and the police had arrived. There was a young couple sitting with Parker, talking with him and applying pressure to his head wound. I found Lexi in a police car wrapped up in the front seat with the heater blowing on her and Dylan wrapped up on the front seat of a seperate heated police car.
The ambulance arrived and an EMT attended to Parker. The tow truck came to take away our crushed van. And of course, we answered many questions the police had for us.
This pic is a bit dark (it is 2 AM!), but if you look closely you can see the EMT on the ground with Parker and our upside down van with all of it's contents spewed on the ground.
The ambulance drove us all to Ogden Regional Hospital where Parker was examined and a head and chest scan was performed. Fortunately, his head injury wasn't serious and nothing else was wrong. The doctor numbed his head with shots (no, that wasn't fun) and then stapled his scalp back together.
Meanwhile, my mom had come to our rescue and Lexi and Dylan were surprisingly full of energy and were hamming it up for grandma in the waiting room.
While in the waiting room, I was greeted by the police again where they kindly presented me with my ticket. Talk about kicking me when I'm down! Seriously, they were kind about it and I know that they were just doing their job.
We left the hospital and arrived at my parents house at about 5 AM. We quickly got the kids to bed and tried to sleep ourselves. Poor Rob was only able to squeeze in an hour or so of sleep before he had to wake up and drive to Salt Lake and Park City for job interviews. Some time during his busy morning, he stopped at the tow company to collect our massive load of belongings (camp gear, beach gear, and everything else a family of 5 needs for a road trip). I wish he would have had our camera to take a picture of the van in daylight.
Surprisingly we were able to recover all of our belongings.......well, almost. There were broken DVDs and a cell phone charger as well as my favorite lip gloss that were never recovered. Its amazing that all of our other belongings were left undamaged.
Our crazy Parker didn't sleep much before he bounded out of bed and was ready to go in the next room to play Nintendo. He actually did surprisingly well with his head injury and didn't complain much. ..............until we had to wash his hair. My sweet husband was so kind to conquer that ordeal. The screams and noises that came out of Parker were amazing.
My family was so fortunate to have been able to walk away from such an awful accident. There is no doubt in my mind that we were being watched over that night. We were able to go on with our journey as planned. We enjoyed my sister's wedding and festivities. She was so kind to offer us her Toyota 4-runner (long story with car insurance rental) to drive to California while she was honeymooning in Hawaii.
We had a fabulously fun time in California with Rob's family and were so grateful that we were able to continue our adventure as planned. Many fun memories were made despite our tragic start.
This past Saturday (May 17, 2008) a year after our accident, I opened up the newspaper and read on the front page about an awful accident that had happened early that morning. A mother living in Utah was traveling to Texas alone with her 4 boys when they were in a car accident in Colorado. Only the two youngest boys survived, one of them an infant.
Again, I was reminded of how fortunate my family was for being able to walk away from our accident with very minor injuries. We lost our new van but no lives. Truly amazing!
1 comment:
What a crazy story. I had heard most of it in bits and pieces, but you guys were really very blessed to make it out (relatively) uninjured. We're sure glad you did.
Post a Comment