Getting Stuck in the Mud -- Dad to the Rescue!

Yesterday I went up to Mom and Dad's place to feed the horse as usual. I scoped out the "road" down to the barn and saw that most of the snow and ice had melted, leaving nice, dark ground showing. So . . . I proceeded to begin to drive down to the barn. However, the farther I went, the more apparent it became that the ground was way too muddy to be driving on. I slipped and slid my way down to the barn and knew that I wouldn't have any chance of driving back up the hill. I figured I would have to leave the van there until this morning when the ground would be frozen enough to drive on.

However, "ever-helpful Dad" had other ideas . . .

He came down on the four-wheeler, hooked it up to the van and attempted to pull me up the hill. We had been making very slow and slippery progress when, after covering about 15-20 feet, the tow rope broke. He then decided to try to use his pickup to try to tow me. He went back up the hill with the four-wheeler and was backing his way down with the truck when he saw that he, too, was getting stuck. He attempted to drive back up the hill and only managed to spin and dig huge, deep ruts in the ground.

Next, came chains for the truck. . .

He was in the process of putting on the second set of chains when Mom, having noticed our dilemma, came walking down to see what was going on. She stopped and chatted with Dad for a minute and then continued walking down the hill to where I was sitting in the van . . . playing Words With Friends (an iPhone version of Scrabble) with Auntie Steph.

[By the way . . . I was not outside my van in the wind and cold with Dad because I had stupidly chosen to wear my Dansko clogs and couldn't make it through all the mud -- the second dumb decision of the day.]

Back to Mom . . .

Once she reached my van, I glanced out the passenger window just in time to see her disappear. She had slipped and fallen in the mud, luckily not sliding underneath the van. She managed to get back up and came to sit (on a carefully placed cloth) with me in the van where we watched Dad finish putting the chains on the truck.

Dad then drove the truck up to a crest on the hill where he parked it sideways so he could anchor the four-wheeler to it while he used the winch on the front of the four-wheeler to haul me up the hill.

It took three separate "winchings" to get my van to a point where I could drive to the top of the hill myself.

SO . . . my quick to trip to feed the horse turned into an hour and a half. We then went in the house and had herbal tea and ate yummy food.

Thankfully, I have a father who is not only one of the most helpful people I know, but is also very clever and loves an engineering challenge. We have always kidded him about always having lots of scrap cardboard (used during this escapade to keep himself clean while hooking the tow rope to my van) and LOTS of different types and lengths of rope -- also indispensable. He not only had all of the materials necessary to save my sorry rear, but also the ingenuity.

THANKS DAD!

P.S. The one thing we did not manage to do was take any pictures of this little event. Bummer. They would have been great.

P.S.S. Dad snapped some "aftermath" pictures tonight. Keep in mind that some of the tracks at the bottom of the hill have been smoothed over by the four-wheeler and do not look as dramatic as they did yesterday.