Adventures on the mountain

Well, I wanted to be able to get in all the details, so figured I would hop on here instead of doing just a regular facebook post. Most good stories start with "it was a dark and stormy night....". This story doesn't start this way, but pretty much ended up that way. We have been planning and waiting for our first trip out in our new trailer since the day we bought it. The whole family has been so excited. We planned our first trip out to go to Leavenworth,WA. For those of you not from here, it's a small Bavarian village located in the mountains. It's beautiful! Every weekend during December they have a tree lighting festival where the whole village lights up with Christmas lights. We've never been for it and were really excited to go. We found a cute little RV park right in town, made our reservations and made our plans. The first part of this adventure is that Bekah started not feeling well on Wednesday night. All of a sudden she was complaining of her head hurting and throat hurting. Thursday morning wasn't much better, so we both stayed home from school and pre-school. Since we were heading out of town the next day I decided to take her to the doctor. So glad I did because she was diagnosed with strep throat. She continued to get worse throughout the day but we started her on the antibiotics and alternating Tylenol and Advil. By Friday morning she was feeling quite a bit better. Thank goodness! So Doug and I continued to pack everything into the trailer and make our preparations. Bethany got home from school at 2 and we picked up JD early and left Yelm around 3:30. We headed north on I-5, hit highway 18 and headed towards I-90 to go over Snoqualmie pass. Snoqualmie pass was no problem, clear and dry! Doug and I had been checking the pass reports most of the week so we figured we would have no problems! After Snoqualmie we headed towards 97 north to Blewett pass. As we start heading up Blewett the snow really started coming down. This was very unexpected. I called Jeff and Angela to see how the pass was a couple hours earlier when they had gone over it and they said it was fine! Definitely not the experience we were having. We were skidding, losing traction, seeing cars spun out everywhere. We pulled over to the scene of an accident where there were a few firetrucks and police cars. Doug got out to ask what they thought about us making it up. The policeman told us to keep going up, just go carefully and slowly. So we did. We made it up a couple more miles.All of a sudden our truck wouldn't go forward anymore. We were completely losing traction. Doug again pulled over and we realized that we were stuck. Doug hopped out into the 2 degree snowy windy weather, turned the heat on in the trailer and told the kids and I to get in there. We were just in there and trying to start coming up with a plan when there was a knock on the door. A very nice man named Bill had stopped to see if we needed help. Bill and Doug had found that we blew a tire on the trailer and that was probably why we lost traction. For the next hour Doug and Bill tried to change the tire, but had no luck. Apparently the tire jack used on a trailer is a different size than a car, which we know now:-) Bill said good luck and was on his way. While they were trying to fix the tire I was in the trailer trying to call 911 with spotty cell coverage. They transferred me to state patrol and the guy I spoke with on the phone didn't seem like there was anything they were going to be able to do. So, we decided to unhook the trailer, leave it, and head over the pass with just the truck. The plan at this point was to get the kids and I somewhere safe, Doug was going to get what he needed to fix the tire and chains for the truck tires and go back and get it. We got about 3 miles up the road and our phone rang. It was state patrol. They were at the trailer and said they could help change the tire, so we turned back around and went back to the trailer. The kids and I stayed in the truck while Doug and the very nice state patrol officer changed the tire. After the tire was changed,and the trailer was hooked back to the truck we tried to get moving. At this point it had probably snowed more than 6 inches in an hour and no matter how hard Doug pushed on the gas the truck/trailer combo wasn't moving. It wasn't looking very good. It was by the total Grace of God that at that exact moment a guy named Chris was driving over the pass. He immediately pulled over and offered to tow us to the top of the summit. He had straps and strapped our rig up to his truck and pulled us out of the snow and up to the top of Blewett pass. When we reached the top of the summit we disconnected the straps and offered to follow us all the way down the mountain to Leavenworth. We rolled into the RV park around 11pm, about 4 hours later than we had anticipated, tired, hungry and cold. This story has taught us many lessons. Our first lesson is that if we are going to do winter camping it will be on our own side of the mountains! The biggest lesson is how we can serve and sacrifice for those around us. Bill and Chris didn't need to stop and help us, but they did. They didn't need to spend time out in the snowy stormy weather, but they did.They didn't do this for reward, but they did it to help a family in need. Such an amazing example. Overall, we are very happy with how the kids handled this whole ordeal. They behaved and didn't get whiny. We ended up having a great time in Leavenworth and took the LONG way home. We went south east to completely avoid Blewett pass. We can't wait for our next camping adventure as long as it's a warm fun one:-)