Road Trips..never know what you might get...

As many of you might know, some friends and I left last evening to head to Kansas City, Missouri to visit Laura and Melissa for a long weekend. It started out fairly uneventful...little did we know what the future would hold...

While driving on 80/90 we missed our exit onto 80 - Thanks Mike for being the navigator! - so we took a really long route to try to get back. We ended up driving around parts of Gary until Lindsey and I convinced the guys to backtrack (we temporarily forgot that guys dont like getting help with directions). For a short time we were considering off roading to get to the other side of the road. Luckily enough we found another option at the last minute. We assumed this would be the excitement for the day. We were wrong...much more was in store.

Soon after we got on 80, within a matter of 15 seconds a barrel and two cars tried to hit us! Once again, we thought the excitement was over. Wrong again.

After stopping at a gas station that offered "replicas" of cologne in a coin machine that actually sprayed it onto you, we were on the road with Mike heading up the drivers seat.

Then we hit St. Louis - once again - random freak out that we were getting lost - no worries this time, they just have a strange way of splitting the roads up only to meet again a mile later! Thank goodness it was the middle of the night.

With St. Louis out of the way, Rich, Lindsey and I nodded off. Only to awake when the car jerks from an impact. I believe I may have screamed but I could be wrong. Turns out a monster of a deer ran right across the highway and right into our front left side of the truck! It happened so fast Mike didn't even realize what happened at first. We pull over to check out the truck (we thought we might have been dragging it - no worries there either, no deer left behind) and Lindz and I let the guys get out to check the damage. When I saw Rich's face I knew it wasnt good. We got out to discover the bumper was against the front tire and the headlight was hanging out. We call Laura (read her play by play here) and decide to call 911. We all climb back in the car and realize the drivers side door will not open - then Mike says "Guys I think there's blood on the door" EEK!

So we wait and we wait and we wait. The cop #1 shows up. As he looks at the damage we hear him say "There's shit all over the car" - we assume that meant "stuff". No. He really meant shit. The flippin deer not ran out in front of us, the deer left feces behind! Aaahhh!

Lucky enough the cop and the tow truck driver were really nice and arranged where to take the car where it could get fixed quickly (there was a Chevy dealership nearby) and a hotel for us to stay at. The cop gave us a ride (strange to be in the back of a cop car!) to the hotel and gave us the number of where the car was being taken to and what we needed to do. Thankfully the hotel guy was really nice and told us we could check out late given that we had no idea how long we were going to be here in lovely Warrington, Missouri.

So here we sit, in the hotel room, waiting for our car to get done. Thank goodness they could get it in and make it driveable within a few hours!

And amazingly I am able to see God in all this mess. First off, after the tow driver and the cop tell us this happens every night and that this is deer season, the cop says how lucky we were. I was assuming he meant because none of us were hurt. No he meant we were lucky it happened where it did. If we had been 30 miles farther we would have been in BFE, nowhere near a town with NO cell phone service.

This has given us a whole new definition of the phrase "There's a deer..."

Makes you thankful in even the rough patches. Through all of this we have gotten closer and amazingly are still having a good time!

And through all this, Melissa still does not know that Lindsey and I are on our way with the guys...hehe...should be an interesting rest of the weekend...pictures to come...