Cali Trip Part 2

For those of you that are jumping into the story from here you might want to read from the beginning here.

We started the 7+ hour drive through the Mojave desert Sunday afternoon at 12:15 p.m. Utah time, which would have got us to Visalia, CA around 6 p.m. California time. We would have made it too, had it not been for two things. Neither Leslie or I had thought about the "Vegas traffic" until we were in it. We had forgot that many people from L.A. and the surrounding area go to Las Vegas for the weekend and then go home .... ON SUNDAY.

As we were passing Vegas at 2-ish I thought that it would be "too early" for traffic to be really bad. I didn't take into account that Game 5 of the NBA Finals was a mere 4 hours from tipoff. We made it through Vegas while Kendrick was sleeping, but he woke up soon there after and proceeded to scream. He thought we'd give him a break, go potty and stretch out in Primm (which I'm slowly growing more fond of by the way).

We were off the road for 5-10 minutes. We went into one of the casinos for Les to find a potty and as soon as we entered the doors, Kendrick's eyes were as big as saucers and he was looking at all of the lights. I couldn't help but laugh as we walked through the casino, up a ramp to the bathrooms.

Going back downstairs to the casino was not as entertaining as the first time. Kendrick looked around, but not as quickly as he had earlier.

We were back on the road in the next few minutes then came to a halt before the next exit. We sat patiently when we heard over the radio that they had closed ALL sorth-bound lanes of the freeway and all but one of the nouth-bound so that they could land a Life-Flight helicopter on the freeway.

Everyone must have heard the same thing because all of the sudden there here a ton of people out their cars walking up and down the lanes of traffic. I asked Les if we should get Kendrick out of the car and she didn't see a problem with it, so we got out.

Les grabbed the camera and started taking pictures, both with her camera-phone (which some of you received a text) and the regular camera.

We had a giant bag of Dum-Dums so I opened it up and started walking up and down the highway giving them out to complete strangers. It was a blast! I would ask parents with their windows down if they wanted some suckers. The parents would say no, but their kids would be grabbing at the bag already. It was nice to be friendly when most people were just pissed off that we had to sit in traffic.

After an hour of chilling with many other drivers, the Life-Flight helicopter took off and we knew it was time to get back in. The funny thing was, when we finally did start moving again, there were people still walking down to their cars. We couldn't help but laugh and think, "Didn't you guys realize they were going to open up the freeway after the helicopter left?"

We soon came upon the accident and this is what we saw.

If you look in both of the traffic pictures, you can see an over-pass. It was just on the other side of that over-pass that the motor home rolled over. If we had not gotten off the freeway for a little break, the accident might have been right behind us, or worse .... we might have been in it.

We heard on the radio right after passing the accident that there was one confirmed fatality but didn't hear what happened to the other people that were in the accident. We felt so grateful that Heavenly Father was watching over our little family. Before every vacation that my family ever went on, after the car was packed (and sometimes after the family was packed in the car) my dad would always have a family prayer and ask Heavenly Father to protect us and help us to get along.
I decided to do the same thing on this trip, and I'm glad that our prayer was answered. In fact, I had been planning on saying another prayer in St. George, but had forgotten. My lovely wife, suggested that we say a quick prayer to thank Heavenly Father that we were safe.

The rest of the drive was pretty un-eventful. Les watched a movie, while I listened the the final round of the U.S. Open. Yes, I said listen. I have XM radio and I was able to hear the play-by-play of Tiger's amazing comeback. It was a blast to listen to.

We got to the hotel around 7:30-8 ish. I hung out with Kendrick while Les went to get dinner. "Where did you get dinner your first night in California?"

Where else? IN-N-OUT!

*** Look for more on the trip soon ***