Twelve Years Ago Today...

The other day, quite randomly, I thought to myself, "Self, wouldn't it be fun to do a blog entry on a random day in your life from years past?" I thought it would be fun but never did anything with it. Then today while sitting in church, we had our entire sacrament meeting dedicated to Joseph Smith because today, June 27, was the exact day 166 years ago that he and his brother Hyrum were martyred in Carthage Jail. That once again got me thinking about my life. Where was I on this day 10 or 15 years ago? Well, seeing as I most likely had it written down somewhere, I went through my journals and found an entry from 1998. This is a good one so you all better get ready to do some reading!

The location was Grand Junction, CO - Country Jam, USA - and I was with my sister Valerie and her friend Becky. I do have pictures of this experience somewhere, but was unable to find them at the time of posting.

June 27, 1998

Saturday. Woah! Today was no normal day. First of all I was awake until close to 3am due to obnoxious drunk parties going on in near proximities. Curfew is at 2am and that only means they shut off the lights. People still blast their obnoxious music (funny how we are at Country Jam and all but country is being played) and blast their crude obscenities. I was plain disgusted but it was kind of funny to listen to drunk people talk. It was a new experience for me, that's for sure! :D We got out of bed at 8:30am and somewhat got ready for the day. We took off in the car to go find some breakfast a little after 9am and that is where our adventurous day really begins.

We were driving east on I-70. The speed limit was 75 so we were going that if not maybe 80. We were driving along when all of a sudden there was this knocking noise. We didn't know what it was but we were a little nervous. I don't exactly remember what we decided it was, but all of a sudden Becky swerved into the left lane and said, "Oh my gosh!" We then went flying back into the right lane and her hands had no control of the steering. We did a couple 360's into the right shoulder of the road, then we were clear off the road and down a small decline near some trees. We were screaming so bad. Everything flashed before my eyes and I thought for sure we were dead. Once the car stopped I looked at the window and all I saw was dirt so I had thought we flipped the car. I let out a loud scream and Becky & Valerie both said, "Camille are you alright?" I looked at me. No blood, no broken anything, so I said yes. We pulled out to get back onto the road but decided to check out the damage. We got out and noticed we had 3 blown tires. We weren't going anywhere. Come to find out, what really happened was Becky had swerved to miss a squirrel. Can you believe we almost died because of a stupid squirrel? DUH!

A few people stopped to offer help and one couple even went into town to call a tow truck. About 10 minutes later we saw two patrol cars come flying down the freeway. We thought they were after someone but no, they were coming for us. Someone had called in on a cell phone and said there had been a roll over on the freeway. We had a Ranger, two patrol cars, a fire truck and an ambulance all pulled up on the side of the road. Quite the audience, huh? You should have seen them all once they found out what caused the accident. The Ranger was the nicest. He asked us if we were okay and made sure our necks weren't stiff or anything. The cop was kind of rude. He walked up and said, "Let me give you a piece of advice. If it's smaller than your car, hit it and if you're going to hit it, aim for the butt because it can't walk backwards."

After 10-15 minutes they all left us. The cop said he would check back in 15 minutes to make sure a tow truck came. In the meantime, the original couple came back and said they had made a phone call and a truck should be on the way. ONE hour passed - no tow truck and no cop. Nice to know you can rely on a cop when you need one, huh? About 5-6 other people stopped to offer assistance though which I thought was really nice of them. Well, Becky called the police dispatch and told the lady we needed a tow truck. The lady asked where we were located and then laughed. She said, "Oh, hold on". So, it sounds like they all went back to the station and had a coffee break and told everyone how we swerved to miss a squirrel. After another 45 minutes a tow truck finally arrived and towed us to Big-O tire. It was about time too because two hours in a hot car is not fun! It took about 1/2 hour at Big-O to put four new tires on the car. Talk about an expensive trip for Becky. It was such a scarey experience. We still don't know how we managed to not flip the car*. Talk about heaven's blessings! I am just grateful I am alive because I could very easily be dead....

...We are all now tucked in bed. We are a little stiff from the accident but we're okay. Our shakiness is gone and we are back to normal. I doubt we'll get much sleep but we'll try anyway. It was a very crazy day and I am so thankful for my life and for Heavenly Father watching over me all the time. Goodnight.


*Side note: Apparently I didn't record this in my journal, but I remember someone (one of the cops, maybe?) telling us that based on how we spun off of the asphalt and onto the gravel at such high speeds, the change in friction should have caused our car to roll. He was quite surprised that it didn't and said that we were extremely lucky. That would probably explain why the person who called 911 about a rollover thought we had actually rolled the car.

**Oh, and in case anyone is curious, we did make it back for the afternoon portion of the concert which was amazing!