Fall Update and Thanksgiving Adventure

Since it's almost Christmas I figured I should update on where the rest of fall went after Halloween. In reality most of it was just wet. All in all we had a pretty quiet but fun fall. For Thanksgiving we drove over to NY to visit with Grandma and Grandpa Ostrom. It was a good visit with a yummy dinner. We even had fun braving Black Friday and got to enjoy a nice lunch at FoCastle Farms. It was the trip back home that really began our adventure. There was a light snow but hey - we live in New England by Thanksgiving weekend you just kind of expect it to be part of life for the next 5 or 6 months. We left at about 2 in the afternoon because I was supposed to teach in Primary on Sunday and we still had some shopping and cleaning etc. that we needed to do that evening. We were driving merrily along (I think the kids had fallen asleep) and started climbing the mountains when we reached our first accident. After waiting for probably about 20 minutes in traffic that was more stop than go Mark decided to try going around the mountain instead -so we managed to turn ourselves around (did I mention that we also happened to be pulling a trailer we were getting from Mark's parents). A little while later down the road there was another accident. This time though it was just slowing a bit so we kept on going and thought how lucky we were since it seemed to be a bad day for accidents. Thankfully we stopped and filled up at the next town we came to and kept on our way home. It must have only been 4 or 5 PM by then because we didn't stop to get food even though it was close to eating time. After we had been out of the town for bit and into the middle of nowhere we came on our 3rd accident of the trip. This time it was a solid line of cars at a stop for as far as we could see and the only ones that seemed to be coming from the other direction looked to be ones from up ahead that were turning around. Probably over an hour after being pretty much stopped it was getting dark, the kids were up and hungry (thank goodness for the distraction of portable DVD players!), and the roads were getting slick with ice. We had inched close enough to see lights from the emergency vehicles but never actually saw them. At last we cheered as we cautiously edged our way back up to a crawl and then a fraction of the actual speed limit. Probably no more than 5 miles beyond where we had seen the lights traffic stopped once again. It was just too much after nearly 6 hours on the road on what should have been a 2.5 hour drive we were still over an hour from home and stopped with the roads just getting worse. Finally we crept up the road enough to a motel that proclaimed a resteraunt. Perfect - a bathroom, dinner, and sleep. We pulled off the road and up the hill to the sanctuary - and got stuck. The weight of the trailer was just too much for the van with all the ice. I ran Alicia up the hill to see about a bathroom and check out the place. Turns out the people that were running it had had it for less than 2 months and were in the process of a major rennovation so no food. We were out of options though so we asked if they happed to have any rooms left. We got their very last room - one that under any other circumstance they would not have offered. It did have a fridge and microwave but the television and phone didn't work and there was no internet. It all worked out okay though, the kids were just glad to be out of the car and in addition to sharing some of their own food with us they talked a pizza place into delivering for pretty much the whole motel - most if not all were in the same position as us. The next morning one of the other guests we had met the night before helped Mark with the van and tailer and we headed off into a morning that was clear, bright, and beautiful.