Mud – 1, Car – 0

Last Thursday night after dinner I headed out to the library on  a hunt for a book Luke would enjoy reading and then the grocery store. Grocery shopping on a Thursday night is not a normal thing for this household. Visiting the library on a Thursday night and without Madeline in tow is not a normal thing either. What was with all the randomness? Well, Friday evening we were to pick Luke up from working and head directly to the cabin for the weekend and I wanted to get some of the required errands out of the way without Maddy.

Friday was spent getting food ready, packing clothes for the three of us , figuring out toys and games to keep Maddy entertained and loading the car, among other things.  After running nonstop all day we raced from the house at 3:45 to pick up Luke and at around 4:10 we were making our way to our towards Wyoming. It had been cloudy and a bit rainy all day but we our only thought was that, unlike the picture above, we might be spending most of our weekend inside the cabin. We were looking forward to  a weekend away from it all so a weekend inside the cabin was just fine with us.

As we got closer to our destination the rain picked up and the clouds got darker, we decided to abandon our plans to roast hot dogs over the fire that night for dinner and stopped instead at a pizza place in town. Unfortunately it was really sub-par pizza. Fortunately our tummy’s  were full as we headed into the cabin, otherwise our tempers may have gotten the best of us later on. On our way out of town Luke realized one of our tires was really low so he got gas and filled the tire will air. We decided to check the tire again as we got closer to the cabin but before we got off the main road.

We should have seen the rainy cloudy day as a sign to stay home, but weather at the cabin had never given us much trouble before.

We should have seen the bland, dry and chewy pizza as a sign that things were deteriorating, but we were in Laramie and didn’t expect much from our meal anyways.

We should have seen the low tire as a sign and just headed home, but we have to put air in our tires every now again so we didn’t think too much of it and when the tire presure was fine when we checked it before heading onto the dirt road to the cabin we thought we were in the clear.

We should have seen the muddy ruts every 1000 yards or so as a sign that we were headed towards trouble but we were doing just fine thus far and the road had never given us trouble before.

After spending all that time getting ready, packing driving and hyping up the cabin trip to Maddy we didn’t want to just give up. Which is why we ended up stuck in the mud. Even though we had made it about 30 feet of the way and only had another 2 or 3 feet to go our all-wheel drive Passat didn’t stand a chance when we slid just 6 inches to the left and right into a deep muddy rut. I won’t recount to you here what words came out of my mouth, but I will tell you that not once did Luke or I snap at each other, utter one “I told you so,” or lose our cool.

Being stuck in the mud just 2 miles from the cabin if it were just Luke and I would have sucked but not been too big of a deal. We probably would have worked at it a bit and then hiked into the cabin for the night and then come back in the morning with help from one of the neighboring cabins. Being stuck in the mud with our baby girl in the car was a whole other story. The cold rain and the dark coming on from the day ending further complicated the situation. Cold +rainy+dark+Maddy does not = a 2 mile walk to the cabin for the night.

So we set to work. Thank you mom and dad for all those 4-wheeling adventures that I took for granted as a child, I learned somethings and with Luke at the wheel of the car and me placing wood and branches in just the right way we were slowly working our way out of the deep mud 1 or 2 feet at a time. I was cold and my hands were covered in mud. Luke was cold and his shoes and pants were covered in mud. Our adrenaline was pumping, but we were working like a team.

After a while a truck came down the road behind up and offered to help us get out. Turns out our saviors were on their way into their cabin which happens to be just 2 cabins up from ours. They offered to pull us through the mud so that we could continue on to the cabin, but we had had enough so they gave us a tug or two to help us backward out of the mud the remaining 5 or 6 feet and we promplty drove home.

Maddy was so disappointed we weren’t going to the cabin. Luke was disappointed that he drove into the mud, even though he really felt we would make it through just fine and I was disappointed I had ignored all the signs that were trying to tell us to go home in the first place.

We were all bummed out to miss one of our few cabin weekend of the summer but salvaged the weekend and had some wonderful family time, just the three of us. Swimming, napping, reading, painting, a mock “cabin” breakfast complete with hot chocolate for the little lady and a whole day hanging around the house doing whatever we wanted.

Everything turned out fine. We learned a lot of lessons and we have a story that we can now laugh at. My biggest regret? We were so focused on getting the car out of the mud we didn’t take a single picture of our predicament, what kind of bloggers/photographers are we?