Our dramatic, memorable, two-day trip to Jackson

The exhausting short of it:

Mr. Keller and I took a trip to Jackson Hole. Our brakes almost failed driving down the mountain, I lost my debit card, a two year-old baby was ran over and killed a mile away from our house, my cousin’s grandma passed away unexpectedly after falling asleep in her bath, our basement flooded 250 gallons of water, and we had to end our trip a few days early.

The long version:

My mom drove into town last Wednesday with her Mary Poppins bag filled with all sorts of fun for the kids. Jared and I were off on our little getaway. At the beginning on the summer, we had plans to go to Florida. Then, we were going back to Huntington Beach. The flights were paid for. I just couldn’t feel comfortable about making any definite plans, yet we were in major need of a getaway.

Wednesday rolled around. Mr. Keller got off work at noon and we went car shopping here in town (again). Not feeling super great about what we were finding, we drove to Idaho Falls. We test drove one there. No luck. We had no plan and no idea where we’d end up for our long weekend, so we just drove. To Driggs. Though neither one of us had ever been there, it was beautiful! With little options, we checked into a dumpy motel and had dinner. We walked around town and then had the worst ice cream ever. We stayed up late watching fuzzy cable tv and crashed for the night. The next morning, we drove over to Jackson Hole. I was dying over the views. As we came through the pass, I made Mr. Keller pull over so I could take it all in. God lives and he molded those mountains by hand. I could see it.

We drove a little further down the mountain and decided to pull over again. Once we were parked, we found out our brakes were smoking like crazy! They smelled so awful! Mr. Keller was so worried because as we stopped, he felt like they weren’t responding at all (as in our brakes weren’t working! Down one steep, curvy mountain! Oy!). We decided to stay stopped for an hour while they cooled off. While we stopped, I checked my phone to find a news update about that sweet little baby boy, as well as a text from my mom telling me about my cousin’s grandma passing. My heart was aching! We said a prayer about all the things we were worried about at that point, and I felt so much better.

We kept driving down the hill with no problem. When we drove into town, we had a meeting with another dealership and we test drove another vehicle. Within a few moments of driving it, I knew the never-ending seven-week search had finally ended. I know this sounds so silly to be so concerned about purchasing a vehicle, but it’s a big decision for us. It’s a lot of money to spend. And it wasn’t something I wanted to be doing again in the next year or two if we ended up buying the wrong one for our family. We were both very comfortable with our decision, so we signed the paperwork, went to lunch and went in search of a place to check in for the next few nights. We found the cutest little cabins and crashed for a while. 

That evening, we rode a chair lift up Snow King mountain and hiked around some of the ski trails. The view was amazing all around! The weather was perfect. We had such a good time. That night, we walked around town and ate dinner on the square. The next morning, we walked around town a bit. We went to a few antique shops and then drove a few miles to Jenny Lake. We went canoeing around the lake. It was so much fun! When it started to thunder, we found a little beach to dock on for a while. I walked around in the sand looking for treasures to bring home to Morg. When we thought it had cleared up enough, we headed back out on the lake, but shortly it was pouring like crazy! We were soaked and laughing so hard. When we made it back to shore, we turned in the canoe and realized we had lost the debit card somewhere. The ladies were so nice and told us we didn’t even need to worry about paying. We ran back to our car to get another card and I got a frantic phone call from my mom saying our basement was flooding from a bad rain storm. I was wondering if the drama would ever end! Luckily we were able to have the appropriate guys there within twenty minutes working right away to get the water sucked out. We drove back to the cabin and tried to see our options about checking out. They told us we would have to forfeit the money for the next night if we left, but we really didn’t have a choice. So, we packed up and drove home in the worst rain storm I’ve ever seen! Plus, it was dark and I’m so blind at night and we had two cars to drive instead of one, so I had to drive. I was white-knuckled the entire time. I said one continuous prayer and we somehow made it home to a super-hero grandma, two little boys, fresh cookies and our own beds! The water flooded three bedrooms, but thankfully none of our stuff was damaged. We had to remove all the carpet padding and some sheet rock, but after seeing the pictures and videos of the storm around town, I cannot believe we were so fortunate to have such minimal damage.   

We went to bed feeling grateful. Not as relaxed as we thought we would have felt returning from a vacation, but very thankful.

And also, on a very trivial note, I have a car! A cute little mineral gray Ford Escape! No more car salesmen, no more craigslist ads, no more driving Mr. Keller crazy! Yay!

Here are some pictures from our trip: