Well That Didn't Go According To Plan...

This past weekend was a long weekend for us (Memorial Day).  Daniel and I had tacked an extra day onto it with the hope, initially, of going to see The Foo Fighters at a big festival in Oregon with some friends.  That didn't quite go according to plan - the tickets were sold out before we could get our hands on them.

We thought we'd go camping in Oregon instead.  Four days in the spectacular Blue Mountains of Oregon would be (almost) just as good, we figured.  But then it started raining, and raining, and... raining (and yes, the farmers are as pissed off about the wet weather here as you are pissed off about the dry in Australia).  We didn't really fancy spending four days in a tent in the rain, so that didn't quite go according to plan, either.

Are you sensing a theme here?  Because I have some more for you...

On Sunday, even though it was, you guessed it, RAINING, we thought we'd go for a bit of a Sunday Drive.  We drove down through Rocky Canyon, along Robie Creek Road, up Clear Creek Road, and over to a road or two the names of which I can't quite remember.  These were all dirt roads; one of the lovely things about Boise is that 20 minutes of driving will get you out of town and into the bush. 

There were houses here and there for a while, but we eventually left them behind for scenery.  Lots and lots of lovely scenery. There were spring flowers (including wild larkspur), lovely little creeks everywhere, mountains, canyons, and not another soul to be seen. It was turning out to be quite a lovely drive, and it even stopped raining.

Then we rounded a corner and came across a snow bank.  Not too uncommon at the elevation we were at, especially given that it's been a very cool spring.  It was a pretty big snow bank, but there were some tyre tracks through it.

We paused for a bit, wondered whether we should attempt to drive through it or not, and then decided it was worth a shot.  We were in the Toyota, which has four wheel drive, so what the hell; if we got stuck we should be able to chuck it in four wheel and drive out, right?

Well... not exactly.  We got about three quarters of the way through the snow and got stuck.  Horribly stuck.  And the problem with the kind of stuck we got was that we couldn't get any traction with the four wheel drive.  Not even a little bit.  The Toyota tried and tried for us, but to no avail.

Bugger.  That didn't quite go according to plan.

Now as a general rule, people in Idaho who go out driving in the bush carry stuff with them.  Useful stuff like, oh, a shovel, a torch, blankets, matches, food; you know, your basic survival-type stuff.  It can get pretty remote, pretty quickly (probably why I like it so much). We know this, but apparently we thought these rules don't apply to Sunday Driving, because we were minus most of this stuff.  Especially the shovel, which we could have, oh, say, dug the Toyota out with.

Instead, we (by which I mostly mean Daniel) spent a few hours trying to dig the car out with Daniel's homemade bike rack thingy, which was in the vehicle.  Did I happen to mention it started raining again?  So we made our valiant attempt to dig ourselves out in the RAIN. And sleet.  And I think it might have snowed a little bit, too.

We had a winch thingy (they call them come-alongs here), but we had nothing to hook it to.  Daniel tried to anchor it in the dirt, but it was too soft.  I suppose we could have dug a trench for it... IF WE HAD A SHOVEL!

We had a mobile phone with us, but we weren't getting any reception.  It was starting to get dark. Eventually, we came to the conclusion that we were going to have to spend the night on the snow bank. 

Hmmm.

We had wet clothes, cold bodies, water, a large peppermint patty, a packet of chewing gum and some (very old, very stale) crystallised ginger.

Fortunately, we also had a blanket, a map (this comes in handy later) and a reasonable amount of petrol in the Toyota.

We turned on the car, amped up the heat, and dried out our clothes as best we could.  Did I happen to mention it stopped raining about the time we gave up on our recovery efforts?  Of course it did.

We had a pretty good idea where we were, and actually we weren't that far from Boise, just on the other side of the foothills (you'd know them as mountains) that surround the city.  We realised that there should be a mobile phone tower not too far away from us so Daniel, brave soul that he is, decided to venture forth and see if he could get some sort of reception further up the track.

It was almost dark when he headed out.  I waited with the car, and kept my fingers crossed.  I realised that there are cougars in them there mountains, so when Daniel didn't immediately come back I started thinking all sorts of terrible things about great big cats with great big fangs and big silent feet. Yikes!

He made it back just fine (obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be writing in such an almost cheery manner) with the good news that he had gotten phone reception and had called some friends who we knew would be able to haul us out of our predicament.  Only problem was, they didn't answer the phone... so that didn't go according to plan.

Oh well.  We shared the peppermint patty, choked down some ginger, and tried to get some sleep under the blanket that had fortunately been left in the car.

It was uncomfortable, and it was COLD, but surprisingly enough, there was some sleep to be had.  We woke up a few times and ran the car heater to warm up, and made it through to dawn, at which point Daniel headed back out to call our friends for help.

They answered!  Hurray!  We later found out that it was purely by accident that Maiera noticed Jason's phone was ringing (it was on vibrate), but they agreed to come and save us.  Daniel was able to explain fairly clearly where we were thanks to the map we had with us and our educated guess as to our whereabouts.

As it happened, we were actually planning to spend the day with them and their children, but our original plans did not involve them rescuing us.  So... that didn't go according to plan, either.

Anyway, we waited for our heroes.  Daniel decided to walk down the road to meet them and make sure they didn't miss us, while I decided to take some photos. We didn't think to bring a shovel, but of course we had a camera with us.  Sheesh!  What a pair of idiots.

While I was waiting and taking photos, a young guy on a BICYCLE came by.  It was so funny, it was almost surreal. I mean, we were way out in an unpopulated area. He just happened to be riding the same route that we had driven.  He must have been fabulously fit.  He was very concerned, mentioned that he'd seen Daniel, offered me all his food (I said no), offered to call someone (I explained help was on its way), and then pedalled on his merry way.  Nice guy; I hope he gets a laugh out of his encounter with us.

When Jason and Maiera arrived, along with Jess and Ethan, they not only had a tow chain, they had FOOD! and COFFEE!  Bless them, bless them, bless them.

It took all of 20 seconds to get us pulled off the snow bank, and then we made our way home.  In the sunshine.

Kind of lends new meaning to the term "car camping", I guess.

Here are some of the photos I took.  I'm afraid I don't have any of the car being unstuck - I was too busy drinking coffee and being grateful.

Our Sunday Drive didn't go at all according to plan, did it?  I have come to the conclusion that sometimes the only worthwhile thing to do with a plan is abandon it and see what happens next.