blizzard.

never again!
most stressful day ever!

SOOOOOO.....

andrei drives the regal, and viktorija and i are in the bonneville keeping distance the whole time behind him.

somewhere in iowa, which is pretty much where we've been all day... a car cut off andrei. going 50 in a 70 zone. his choices were hit the car or swerve, so he chose to try to get out of the way. he started drifting within his lane for like 10 seconds. during this, vik and i are gaining on him and i started to stop, and started sliding out. not tooo too bad though. not as bad as him. but by the time we came to a stop he was still moving a bit and his car was totally turned facing us and it looked like he was going to hit us but stopped in time. luckily, the other cars were way behind us. i ended up in the shoulder and within a minute or so were back on our merry way.

then, a while later. again, going 50 in a 70 because of the snow and winds, i have NO idea what happened, but andrei was going fine, but the bonneville decided to slide out. we were taking a super slight turn in the road (so i hear from vik and andrei) and it just went crazy. i don't remember any of it really other than that i didn't know what to do. apparently whatever i was doing, i failed absolutely miserably. the car slid out between both lanes. and eventually led viktorija and me at first going forward, then sliding around sideways, me (driver side) first into the center ditch. we plowed so much snow with the car that it built up halfway up my door and i couldn't open it. and the snow went up to our knees behind the car. can you imagine how andrei must have felt watching that in his rear view and side mirrors? thank goodness we didn't go left- that ditch was steep and had trees. anyway, so andrei drove up to the next exit so he could turn around, then exit again, then pull over by us, which took about 10 min or so. within about a minute of him getting to us, a police was passing by and stopped to talk to andrei, told him to move cuz he could get hit too easily where he was and then came to us. told us to get valuables out of the car because we could be stuck there for a few hours to a few days depending how long the 'ban on towing' in the area stayed. he then drove us the the gas station/store/mcdonalds at the next exit where andrei was. once we got there, the cop chilled outside for a bit while andrei called the area towing company to see when they could get the car out. luckily, as we were getting driven to the mcdonald's, the towing ban was temporarily lifted. so within about an hour an a half of getting stuck, we were out and back on the road.
nobody got hurt, the car didn't get ruined in any way.
it was absolutely insane! viktorija counted 31 cars in the ditch/side of the road incuding us today. whoa!
didn't freak out or anything though. i just needed hugs. lol. viktorija seemed to find it amusing. for both of the slide outs, she was even taking photos... haha. i'll put those up soon. i think.

then, the blizzard got worse and we were going 25mph because the wind made it impossible to drive. and we stopped around 5 or 6pm or so in Walnut, Iowa. and that's where we are now.

lovely, eh?

tomorrow, we'll try to make up for today and get to the west side of colorado as planned. i hope we make it.

and driving so far isn't too too bad. just blizzards are not fun. bad idea to drive through snow being blown by wind to the point of not seeing two vehicles in front of you... i think i said 'this is rubbish' and 'what a nightmare!' a million times today.

but we're safe. and happy. and together.

<3