Through Hell and Back Again, A Roadtrip tale by Lana Pewitt

We are home in Redding. I don't know how we made it here alive -really.

We left Friday morning at 330 am. When we got into Nevada we hit fog -really bad fog. Nothing went wrong for a few hundred miles. We hit snow. We were stuck in a line of traffic in snow 15 miles out of Reno. We were stuck there for almost 2 hours. When we finally started moving we counted 8 crashes, half of which were flipped and crushed. Leaving Reno was a disaster and we were starving and we were battling snow in a city we didn't know and tensions were getting high. We ate at the Waldorf Saloon and then we left. We had to exit the freeway and turn around to buy chains, the pass we wanted to take was closed for snow. Also, did I mention that our windsheild wipers weren't working? We didn't put the chains on right away and I was driving so slowly. Everyone was falling asleep but I kept on in the tracks of the truck in front of us. Suddenly everyone was stopping, my car wasn't however. I veered off to the right and then I kept going and was slowly turning around and going backward...down an embankment. We barely missed a metal pole and a telephone pole. I started sobbing. I could have killed everyone. Not even a minute later a man pulled up in a truck with a chain and pulled us out. We put on the chains and Matt drove for a long time. We were driving through snow from before Reno until Shingletown. (170 miles) The chains started to break and were whipping the car with each rotation of the tires. Eventually we just had to take the chains off. One was frozen and wrapped around the inside of the tire. Seth was up to his elbow trying to pry it off. I drove the rest of the way home. As soon as we were out of the snow we hit fog -again. Then we hit really hard rain (remember the wipers weren't working). We did eventually make it into Redding after the 11 hour drive had been extended to nearly 17 hours. I was physically and emotionally exhausted. I was worried the entire time we were driving and I was incredibly stressed.

We're here. We're getting married in 3 days. We're safe. We made it alive. I can hardly believe it.