Adventures on I-80

Yesterday morning I attended a VisionWalk with my sister, Lacey, and some of her close friends and family. She's losing her eyesight to retinitis pigmentosa and the VisionWalk benefits research on behalf of people like her. It was great to get out and celebrate a good cause, even though I felt a little funny walking along with my basketball tummy. Justin and Nolan attended our ward's financial workshop which turned out really well, he said.

I rode to the VisionWalk with Lacey's friend, Kelly. All was going smoothly until we got stopped on I-80 as we were coming upon SaltAir. We could see some smoke ahead and several emergency vehicles came racing past. We sat for quite some time and were finally informed that the freeway would be closed for 3 to 4 hours. Luckily we were at the front of the huge pile-up that had formed and were given the option to turn around at SaltAir and head down Bangerter highway and through Saratoga Springs to get to the other end of the Tooele valley. It was a tough ride, especially for Kelly and her 4 kids that were not expecting a nearly 3 hour car ride once we finally got home around 3 o'clock. It turns out there was a huge accident involving an SUV that crossed the median and hit a 3-trailer FedEx semi filled with ammunition. They burst into flames and kept exploding, making cleanup difficult.

That evening, Justin and I had arranged for babysitters since it was our last date night before I start nursing a newborn. We checked traffic and saw that it was clearing out so we headed to Salt Lake City. Well, as we drove in we passed miles and miles of cars that appeared to have been there since early afternoon when they were first stopped (5 hours later!). People were wandering around their cars and we even saw some playing football. Traffic was still not moving into Tooele! We started to get very nervous about when we'd make it home to Nolan and the babysitters. We had a delicious dinner at the authentic "Vienna Bistro" and then headed to Gateway to see a movie (which we were too late for). I was in touch with Lacey and advised her to head south through Saratoga Springs to get home. She said she'd go get Nolan until we were able to get home. They tried their luck on highway 201 anyway but couldn't get through and decided to stay in Salt Lake with friends. We felt stuck... we killed some more time at Barnes and Noble hoping traffic would clear out. At 9 o'clock we finally decided to try to go home. We were relieved to see that things had cleared. Our babysitters were such good sports for watching Nolan an extra hour and a half longer than expected. They even had him settled in bed.

Anyway, having that road closed made me realize how trapped our little valley of Tooele really is. With only one major road out, I got to feeling nervous about possible chemical leaks from the south. There would be lots of people clogging that freeway. Let's hope we never experience that.

Wow, what a day it was! I'm just so grateful we were at the front of the line where we were given the option to turn around. What would we have done with Kelly's 4 kids for 5 or 6 hours stopped on the freeway?! And what a blessing that I didn't go into labor on the freeway either! Justin wouldn't have been able to get to the hospital for a long time. It certainly felt good to be safe at home last night when we dropped into bed.