A Foot And Counting

The last couple of weeks have kind of been an Indian summer. I even ran around in a sleeveless shirt a few times so when on Thursday afternoon I looked out the window and saw what looked like snow blowing around in the air, I was shocked and a bit unhappy. I checked on the internet and discovered that we were expected to receive snow for the next week. I was a bit depressed by that but in my head I was cold weather and snow blowing about in the air and maybe a bit on the ground first thing in the morning. Yesterday morning I woke up to discover that I was right, there was a little bit of snow on the ground there was just one problem, it never stopped snowing and it never melted. The temperature stayed at about the same all day and the dropped more in the evening.

Last night we DTS staff planned to go out to dinner at a nice restaurant in Cody. The five of us piled in the truck and began our journey driving a bit slower than the speed limit do to the nasty weather conditions. Not far outside of Meeteetse we saw all sorts of bright lights up ahead and the shock of our lives…traffic in Wyoming!!! We sat for a long while way back from the accident in la line of cars that slowly got shorter and shorter as people decided to turn back. We discussed among ourselves and decided not to go into Cody to eat after all but we wanted to see what had happed so we planned to drive past the accident then turn around and come back. So that is what we did. As we slowly crawled past the emergency vehicles and then the smashed silver car with the top completely taken off (hopefully because the emergency workers cut it off) and the entire back half smashed and twisted sideways, Molly had a sudden intake of breathe and said, "that is my daughter in that car!" Thankfully I was looking at her face and could see that she was looking beyond the smashed car to the EMT's car. AS it turns out her daughter was having a sleepover at a friend's house who happened to be the daughter of the EMT. We were not allowed to stop and steal children from the EMT's car but she was done at the scene so we met her at the fire station in Meeteetse and took both the girls to eat with us because something had happened at the football field and the EMT was called out again. The most shocking thing of the night was that for the first time anyone could remember the road between Cody and Meeteetse was closed. What this means is they drop a lovely red and white striped pole thing like what they have at toll booths and turn on the lights at the sign that says "If light is red the road ahead is closed" Apparently the accident we saw was the second one within a very short amount of time. We are not sure what happened but we do know there were two vehicles involved (the second one was there when we went by the second time I have no idea where it was before) and the person in the one car was in very critical condition and quite possibly would not make it. I don’t know if she did or not.

This morning I woke up to find it still snowing and a foot of snow blanketing the whole world outside and a bit in our bathroom window that had been left open all night. I thought I was going to freeze to death using the bathroom this morning. I am afraid to venture outside do to the Eskimos running about ambushing people with snow. When i first got up this morning no one was about and my roommate and I drove, at the unbelievable speed of 45 to Meeteetse for breakfast. We ran into the problem of no snow scraper. Thankfully Daniel was just heading into town in a truck and we were able to back up (using the rearview mirrors) to where he was parked and borrow his incredibly pathetic six inch long snow scraper. We were even smart enough to take it with us so that when we came out from eating breakfast and found the car once again covered in snow we could clean it off again and get back to base.

Note: This post, just like the last one, was written last Saturday but is just now being posted due to lack of internet.