stuck in the mud

On the way to Jonah and Micah's last wrestling tournament in March, Josh said to me "I was thinking....about taking a different way home". We were headed to Mud Lake, a town that is a 2-hour drive straight down Highway 28 from Salmon. 

"Ummm....okay", I replied. Whenever Josh says "I was thinking..." and then pauses, I know it's either for something monetarily big (like wanting a new truck or purchasing a business) or for some kind of boyish adventure (like a motorcycle ride or 4-wheeling excursion). This was in the adventure category.

"I've always wanted to go on the road through Howe that leads to the Pahsimeroi Valley". The road is not technically "on the way" back to our home in Salmon, but it wasn't too far off, either.

Jonah and Micah's wrestling tournament didn't take a very long time, and by noon, we were done. So, we decided to take the detour route to head home. It was a beautiful day, and we enjoyed seeing new mountains and sage brush and ranches along the road that we'd never traversed before. Over halfway home, Josh needed to use the bathroom. There was a little campground out in the middle of nowhere with an outhouse that we could see from the road. He used the outhouse, then instead of u-turning and going right back to the road, he decided to continue to drive through the campground because it connected to the road on the opposite end. 

This is where disaster struck (AKA stuck).

Because we were driving on the dirt road in the spring, it was very wet with subwater. It didn't appear to be so from the naked eye, but as we were driving, the car started beeping because the tires were losing traction. In the rearview mirror, we could see our tracks in the road, and looking back proved that the road was indeed very muddy. Josh could see a puddle in the road ahead of us, and he knew we'd never make it through it, so he stopped the car and tried to turn it onto the hard ground next to the road. But the car just stopped, and didn't turn. He tried to just turn it around and head back the way we came, but we made it exactly 90 degrees before it would no longer turn.  

Keep in mind we were not in an adventure vehicle--not a truck, not an SUV, not a motorcycle. We were driving our silver car, the low-riding box car. We were now lodged and officially stuck. The length of our car was the same width of the road, and the car was sandwiched in. The road rim was steeper than the front and back bumpers were tall.

 

We walked around and found rocks to put in front of the front tires and behind the rear tires, and then Josh tried to reverse onto the road rim, and then tried to go forward onto the opposite side of the road rim. This just made the tires go deeper in the mud. Josh pushed the accelerator and drove, as I pushed from the outside of the car. We tried turning and going at an angle onto the rim. We tried jacking up the car and putting rocks under the tires, and then the same driving/pushing routine. But nothing worked. The car was only getting deeper and deeper in the mud. The mud on the campground road was clay, and it was so sticky and yucky and it got everywhere. Our feet were covered in it up to our ankles, and the mud was all over our clothes and hands and arms.

I saw a man drive past in his truck on the road 50 yards away, and I tried flagging him down but he wouldn't stop. If we'd had a shovel to dig with or a 4WD truck to pull us with, it would greatly help our situation. We were in a remote area without any cell phone service, so I couldn't call anyone for help, either. So, I sent Jonah and Micah out to the road, and told them to jump up and down when the next car came along. While they were waiting by the roadside, I started using rocks and my fingers to dig away at the rim of the road, and Josh jacked up the two front tires one at a time and put more rocks underneath the tires. 

After over an hour of being stuck in the mud and trying to break free of our calamity, we finally got the car out. After we drove up onto the hard ground surrounding the road, we walked over to the nearby stream and washed off our feet and hands.  We called to Jonah and Micah, and they came back (since no other car drove by) and then we proceeded to drive along on the grass to escape the campground, get to the road, and go home.

It was quite the adventure...Jonah and Micah said they prayed while they were waiting by the road for passers-by that we would be able to get out of there alive. They thought we would die there stranded!!! We all survived to tell about it, thankfully, and the car survived without injury, too. But the next time Josh says "I was thinking..." and the end of the sentence has to do with some kind of road adventure while we are in the silver car, I think I will remember this experience and say "Ummm....no".