No Way that Just Happened

Well, since Jesse took this lovely picture, I figured I’d post the story.

Jesse and I spent Thanksgiving in Oregon with Jesse’s sister Beth and her family, as well as his parents. It was such a fun trip! We ate a lot, slept a lot, went to the coast (so cold, but beautiful!), and even shopped a bunch. (Hey, no sales tax in Oregon...had to take advantage...in the form of a big-screen TV!) We had driven up there, and the drive wasn’t too bad – except we went through the most beautiful stuff in the dark. So we were almost looking forward to the drive home, and all the pretty stuff we would see.

We left at about 9:45 in the morning, which was 10:45 at home. It was a little late, but if we got home at 11 at night, so what? We got through the Portland area easy enough, and drove along the river in a little bit of snow. But we saw some awesome waterfalls along the way! When we veered away from the river, we headed into the mountains. The flashing signs said that chains would be required, but it looked pretty clear from the bottom, so I wasn’t too worried. But once we started up the mountain, and were about 2 miles away from the summit, we came to a stop. The whole canyon was a parking lot. We sat still for about 25 minutes. People were getting out of their cars, playing in the snow and building snowmen. (We heard a rumor that there was a huge accident with a 10-car-pile-up, but we never saw any evidence of it.) When we finally got moving again, it was at a slow crawl. It took us over two hours to go the 40 miles through the mountains. When we got out of them, the weather was still pretty bad, with a lot of rain and slushy snow. But we finally made it to the Idaho border...at about 9:00 at night! It took us 10 hours to get through Oregon!

Jesse started driving once we hit Idaho. The weather lightened up a little, but it was still raining. We thought we were pretty much home-free, until around Twin Falls, when BAM. We hit a deer! Funny thing is, we barely felt the impact. Jesse took it head-on, going 80. It’s a good thing he was driving, because I probably would’ve screamed and swerved (and done more damage)! We slowed to a stop after a bit, and...well, you see what the car looked like. We filed a police report, and left on our banged-up, headlight-less way. The engine appeared to be fine, but we were a little afraid of the hood flying up...at which point, it would have truly been a Tommy Boy scene. We drove the rest of the 230 miles home, getting in at 3:00 am.

We kind of joked about the fact that we were bringing home a Christmas tree, and were very concerned that it wouldn’t make it home okay. But the tree made it fine...the car didn’t. The poor Subaru is now in the shop, and we’ll hear soon whether they fix it or total it.