Trips Gone Wrong

Warning:  Long Post.

This past week we went on a lovely trip to sunny St. George for the blessing of the newest member of the Ridges family.  Sweet baby Kennedy.  There were many great things about this trip, but what I think makes vacations truly memorable is the less than great things that happen.  (On this trip there was a brush fire in the yard next door to us and I forgot to pack any pants for The Hubs!)

As G & G Campbell, my mom, sister, The Hubs and I sat around talking late one night we began to share tales of our most memorable - translation: horrific - travel adventures.  We decided that we can always reflect with a smile on trips that went well, where you actually relaxed and enjoyed something, but the trips we recall with an odd little pang of fondness are the one's that were a disaster from top to bottom.

And so, I present with great nostalgia, one of my worst, and most memorable, trips ever. 

DISCLAIMER:  I've had zero contact with these people, aside from Brit, since shortly after this ill-fated trip. (Not as a result of this adventure, but due to geography). I have no way of getting their permission to publish this little tale.  So, I have changed names and will hope that if they ever do happen to read this post they will do so with a smile on their faces.

This trip took place 4th of July weekend 1998.  I had recently moved back home after two years at Utah State.  A few of my friends from USU called one afternoon wondering if I was up for a spur of the moment trip down to Zions for the weekend.  Of course I said yes.  I quickly recruited my BF Brit and as soon as we were off work for the day we began packing.

We met in SLC at a friend's family's mortuary.  Yes.  I speak truth.  This should have really been a bit of a warning light.  Second warning light should have come when Matt and Ken showed up in a topless jeep with Ken laying face down in the backseat suffering from a fever and some kind of  horrible cough.  But, press on we did.

After some argument - mostly from Ken - it was decided that we would leave my very comfortable car at the morgue and take two jeeps.  But first, we very wisely made sure both tops were off the jeeps.  We loaded up sleeping bags, a cooler and a tarp.  Yep, that's about it as far as supplies went.  We left SLC at 11:00 pm with the thought in our heads that we'd drive straight through to Zions.  Because we were college students and thought this would work.

It did work.  Until Fillmore.  At this time some crazy cold front had come in and we were freezing.  So, we decided to pool our money between the 6 of us and get a cheap motel.  Bad move.

As soon as the guys laid down on their bed one of the legs broke off and so the bed tilted at a crazy angle.   The next morning while I was taking my turn in the shower the shower head - including the pipe coming out of the wall - fell off in my hands.  I have naturally curly hair so I hadn't been planning on washing it having not packed any shellac, but it was like a fire hose and I was drenched within seconds.  I couldn't get the water off and I was screaming like a banshee.  But no one could come in because they were mostly guys and I'm not a fan of Brit seeing me nude.  I managed to ram the pipe and shower head back into the wall, stemming the flow of water, and got out.  One of the guys went in later and finagled the water into turning off. 

Once out of the shower I was sweating buckets from my exertion and went to open a window.  As I went to lift the window up the entire window, wooden frame and all, fell out of the wall and crashed onto the pavement outside our room.  For real!!!  There was total silence for about 2 full minutes...

while we just stood there staring at the giant hole in the wall where a window had been.  Then we all about died laughing.  The guys went out and by some miracle - our only one for the entire vacation - the glass had not shattered.  So they heaved it back into place and we got the heck out of that place.  What a nightmare.

The drive down to Zions worked out fine aside from the two times sleeping bags flew out of the back of jeeps and got ran over by cars following us.  Two of us had tire tread on our "beds" for the rest of the trip.

Zions itself was beautiful.  We hiked The Narrows and then that night we shockingly were unable to find a campsite.  Honestly, it was 4th of July weekend, why would we find a campsite open?  At some point desperation set in and we just pulled off the road, rolled our sleeping bags out on some dirt and slept there...until about 5:00 am when a park ranger informed us we couldn't. 

Since we were up and had nowhere to go we did two more hikes that day rather than the one we had been planning.  All was well until hike number two when Ken - who was probably seriously hallucinating at this point from some terrible disease he was fighting- decided to jump off of a rock into the middle of a pool of water.  Too bad the pool of water ended up being about 4 inches deep.  At first we all laughed at his abrupt landing, but then it wasn't so funny when he was howling in pain and we had to help him down the trail.  He broke his heal. 

I believe the broken heal, lack of sleep and need for medication is what finally convinced us to head back toward home.   When we pulled into Cedar City at the Chevron there was some sort of 4th celebration going on in a field next to the parking lot.  It was very crowded, so we couldn't get in the parking lot entrance and had to drive through another side of the field to get to the gas station.  The field was all muddy from who knows what and Matt may have slightly misjudged the depth of the mud, because about midway through the jeep sunk up to the door.  Bad luck.  Of course the hubs weren't locked.  So, I had to get out on my side and lock the hub while Matt was able to pull off some gymnastic monkey maneuver and lock the hub on his side.  I immediately became stuck in mud myself and it took Matt, Ken and Brit all pulling on my arms to get me back in the jeep.  Minus my shoe.  With mud from my waist down. 

Luckily locking the hubs did the trick and we were able to get to the station.  I had to walk around to the side of the station, find a hose and let Matt literally hose me down to get the mud off me.  It was both hilarious and humiliating as a bunch of the crowd was looking on and cheering for me.

By this time it was getting late and none of us wanted to try to make it all the way home that night.  We had lost our zest for travel and just wanted to sleep somewhere.  At first we thought we'd camp out again, but after a quick check we found that during our mud-bogging the sleeping bags had gotten covered with mud from the tires flinging it while spinning.  Lovely.  We stayed at a Best Western.  SOOOOO worth the money!!!

The next morning we all shuffled out to the car, barely even able to speak to each other any more.  Oh, but it gets worse.  Fates weren't done with us yet.  Somewhere between Cedar City and Beaver it began to poor buckets of rain.  I'm pretty sure that's the only time it's poured rain on the 4th of July weekend EVER in the history of Utah. 

Our jeeps had no tops. 

So, we opened up our muddy sleeping bags, zipped ourselves in, hunkered down and somehow survived. 

I occasionally think about that trip and even though we were pretty much suffering the entire time, I can't help but smile when I think about it.  It was a total disaster.  Everything that could go wrong did go wrong.  But we laughed a lot and I know that none of us will every forget it.

And a month later I went with Matt and Ken to Moab.  But that's another story...