Hey! There goes our Tire!

In a lake…at 9:30pm…in the middle of no where…with no hotels available in Cody, WY…

This is the story of our return trip from Yellowstone. I will tell about Yellowstone later on, but this part is crazier. And God totally had His hand on all of us during this time. We decided that instead of leaving Sat morning, to leave Thurs night, because we’d seen everything, we were exhausted, and driving at night, the kids could sleep. We had come in to Yellowstone from the south, but it was awful because of road construction, so we decided to leave through the east (we later learned, a God thing because had this incident happened going south, we would have been in much worse shape…)

About 9:30, I was dozing off in the car and Jon started hitting the bumps on the side of the road. I woke up thinking he was falling asleep driving, to see our wheel rolling across the road and going over the edge (God). We lost a lug nut, and the wheel came off. There was a lake on both sides of us. Jon’s first thought was “We’re in a suburban, we’re flipping, and going in to the lake.” Thankfully, none of that happened (God). The truck ended up just sitting right down on the pavement.

Jon started looking for the wheel right next to us, but I said no, I saw it go to the other side. I didn’t realize yet there was a lake over there. Jon went over with a flashlight and found it, floating in the lake. He looked down, and there happened to be a big stick that he was able to use to pull it out (God).

Just as he was walking back to the truck, a police officer pulled up behind us. Now, let me explain, when I say we were in the middle of nowhere, I mean NOWHERE. We had passed a “town” that had a bar and Post office about 15 min before, and the next city was another 10-15 miles ahead of us. Come to find out, this police officer is never out that way, and works 100 miles away. He happened to be helping out in another town and was driving back and said that he probably would not be out there again for 2 years (God!).

Well, eventually a highway patrolman showed up as well, along with a tow truck. So, Jon and Hannah rode with the tow truck man (let’s not talk about car seat safety on that one!) and Zach and I rode with the highway patrolman. They were going to drop us off at a hotel. The only problem? Literally every hotel in the city of Cody, WY was full, not one single room available. The PO called almost every hotel for us, with no luck. It was going on 12:30 now, Zach was still awake, we were just praying.

Eventually, the sheriff’s office called us… they had called Crisis Prevention, and they had ONE room available in the next city, 22 mi away. (GOD) So the towman and the PO drove us out there. On our way, my insulin pump battery died. I was about to freak out, then I remembered I happened to grab Jon’s toiletry bag from the truck while grabbing things for the night, and my spare batteries were in there! (God) Anyway, the motel was not my first choice of where to stay, but it was totally fine by me! Talk about God making you humble!

We stayed the night there, and woke up to my pump battery dead, again (I think it was a bad battery). I was freaking out, because we had no way of getting anywhere, but Jon remembered that the night before, he’d given Zach a flashlight to play with, so it just happened to come with us, and it had the right kind of batteries (God again!) Eventually we learned that our car would not be fixed that day. So we tried finding a hotel, only to find one that was going to cost $143/night, and we’d have to be there til at least Mon.

Come to find out, Jon’s brother knew someone who just moved away from Cody, WY, so he called him. He had a friend’s cousin (or something like that) that lived there, and this person was willing to let us come stay with them! Well, we then learned it was going to take until at least Wed to fix the truck, and decided that we should just rent a vehicle to drive home one way in, and then get another one to come back or have Jon fly back. However, this family is actually coming south in about a week, and has volunteered to drive it to meet us about half way! Hopefully this will work out for us.

We eventually got a rental car and made it home about 1am this morning. I have never, ever, ever been so happy and thankful to be back home. The interesting thing is I’ve been reading the Shack while out of town (BAD book to start reading while camping!) but, it was great because at first I wanted to ask “Why is God letting this happen to us?” and then I just heard parts of the book echoing in my head. God is so good! And I’m so glad he just really had us in the palm of His hands, looked after us, took care of us, etc.