Boom Boom POW!

It started off like any other beginning of a trip to Chicago... Dan, Clark, and I in the car moving along up Interstate 55... I annoy Dan by constantly requesting to play games like 20 questions, the alphabet game, seeing who can scream for a whole mile, etc... Clark is always just happy-go-lucky and definitely knows how to make his sister happy by always participating :)

I'm driving the first leg of the trip north... when about 20 miles south of Bloomington I notice something strange on the road... here's how the next (approximately 20 minutes go)...

Kelly: Dan is there something on the roads??
Dan: I think it's just salt, Chicago is supposed to get snow after midnight ya know...
Kelly: Nope, that's definitely snow, and it seems like every mile it keeps getting worse...
Dan: let me pull up the weather radar on my phone... {pulls up map} Oh wow! We're getting slammed right now
Kelly: {as my knuckles are white from gripping the wheel so tight} ya think?! I'm not loving this at all right now...
Dan: Do you want me to drive?
Kelly: YES! Clark do you have your seat belt on??
Clark: Yeppp

At this point there are cars everywhere in the ditches, and you cannot tell where the road begins and ends... We passed mile marker 145 and I was too far over in the left lane to exit there so Dan just told me to pull off at the next spot which just so happened to be a rest area... and the adventure continues...

Kelly: While we're here does anyone have to go to the bathroom?
Dan: Nope, let's keep going, don't even pull in a spot just put it in park right here...
Kelly: Clark, do you want to sit in front??
Clark: I'm good...

Dan gets in the drivers seat...

Clark: Good thing you don't drive in Colorado or places that have real snow Kel, these roads aren't even bad...
Kelly: Sorry if you guys think I'm a wuss, but it was just making me really nervous...
Dan: {as he slowly starts to begin the ramp back to the interstate} No kidding, Look Kelly I'm hitting the gassss...................

Dan: This is gonna hurt...
Kelly: Weeee'reeee gonnnaaaa craaaashhhhh (clark told me I said it in slow motion)...

Next... BOOM! !CRASH!! POW!!

Yep! We crashed into a fence enclosing dumpsters on the rest area property... Dan's superman powers kicked in and he broke away boards and miraculously got us out of the fence... the car appeared to be drivable even though the outside looked a wreck (hehe get it?!)...

The cops said that since we were okay {thank goodness!} and we could drive to get out of the area because of the snow storm, and it would take them 3+ hrs to get to us because of all the other accidents...

So we continued on to Chicago because we didn't want to risk driving back through all the bad weather... So we arrived in the city about 7 hours later... phew! What a night!

That's what we woke up to Saturday morning... BUT we didn't let that ruin our weekend of celebrating my Dad's 55th birthday!

Despite how the weekend began, we made the most of it! I had such a great time with my dad & siblings! We definitely don't get to see each other often enough...

The sad tale of the end of the road for the durango does contain a silver lining... we had actually had the car for sale and made an offer on a new car for Dan Friday morning... Monday they called us and said we got the car... and also got a positive phone call about getting the durango off our hands :)