Worst Road Trip Ever!!

Our plan was to leave early Tuesday morning to head for Disneyland. Our first problem came Monday night. We were headed to my mom's house to get the last of our laundry done and drop Jinx off. On our way out a whole bunch of lights lit up on the dashboard. We think there is something going on with the electric assist but haven't heard from the mechanic yet. Well my parents graciously offered us the use of their Prius. So, Tuesday morning I had to run up to campus and drop off an assignment. This is what it looked like.

  

All I could think was "Hooray! I'm so glad to be going to California right now!" Well we dropped off the Insight and ran back to pick up Nolan's police car so we could leave it in Brigham City while we were gone. For those of you who are locals, you know that we have to drive through Sardine Canyon to hookup with the freeway. On really snowy days they'll close the canyon because it's just too dangerous. Well as we headed up the canyon  the sign said it was open but that you needed snow tires or chains so we headed on in. The canyon should not have been open. Nolan was following me so that if something happened to me, he wouldn't have to turn around to help me. Well, I ended up having to drive through white-outs. I have never in my life driven through a white out and it is officially the scariest thing ever. White out is a perfect description for the situation. You can't see anything but white. But we did make it through the canyon and after that the roads were just fine. We continued on through St. George and Vegas and stopped for some really yummy In-N-Out Burger.

 

We were finally within about an hour of our hotel when the worst possible thing happened. We were coming down the canyon into the San Bernadino valley when we blew a tire. Somehow my amazing husband kept complete control of the car and got us onto the shoulder, the problem was that there was only about six feet of shoulder to be had. There we were at 10:00 at night on the freeway with a blown tire, cars and semi trucks screaming by at 75 MPH and only about a foot and a half between the blown tire and the traffic lane. Nolan made me get out of the car and wait about 10 feet away while he tried to change the tire without getting run over. He got it changed in record time and we headed on our way. It wasn't until we were back on the road that he told me what happened when he was changing the tire. I guess he was so amped up about getting the tire changed before someone hit us that he forgot to loosen the lug nuts before jacking up the car. It took him so long to get the car up that he didn't want to take the time to bring it back down, loosen the lug nuts and then raise it back up. Instead he held on to the tire with one hand and loosened the lug nuts with the other! I didn't think that was humanly possible! 

It turns out that my husband does have the super-human Harper strength! I still can't believe that he did that. He is amazing! The next morning we found a tire place just down the street from our hotel and bought a new tire. After that we started the fun part of our vacation!