Miracles in a Wyoming Snow Storm

Following behind the pick up truck trying to put a little distance between us to let the air clear, we rounded the corner from the closed road onto the only open Easterly road. Jasper expressed his anxiety about our situation with matching concern in his voice and his face. We did our best to console him with the thoughts that we were having about all things working out for the best, not to worry.
As I stood there at the closed station with my new found friend who needed fuel, ever more curious about meeting him here under these conditions, with a boat on the back of his truck, I realize now that I probably responded more abruptly then I should have to his "going to the ocean remark." But at this point, standing in the dark in front of a guy I don't know, having just inserted my credit card into the automatic gas/diesel pump, after searching feebly in the dark for the card slot of a pump at that closed gas station, in the midst of a minor Wyoming style snow storm at 10:20 PM with know where to go, I went for it anyway and I blurted with a slanted, sharp vocal attack, "What ocean, this is Wyoming, and it's 28 degrees." (for christ's sake, or are you f'in nuts - should have been added here but at least I thankfully had some refrain remaining in me at that moment, although I don't understand why.)
He responded to my query, with a completely straight and honest face..., "The Pacific Ocean!" and he looked straight at me. I could see that his faced matched the simple authenticity of his words, as if there was another choice of oceans from where we stood.
I then asked where he was coming from and he then told me that they had left from somewhere North Dakota at 9 AM that morning and had been driving ever since. To make the drama complete he then said that he had also just recently had a flat tire and that he believed he had driven over something in the road that was covered in the snow so he never saw it before it cut into and blew out his right front tire out. He had changed the tire on a dark snowy road (which come on now you got to give this dud a lot of credit here. Changing a flat tire out in the daylight and finding and having everything you need to do it is simply amazing but in a snow storm on a dark road... This guy was on a mission) and was now about to run out of fuel in his truck, just as he finds out he can't go any further on the road south, which by the way is nowhere even close to the Pacific Ocean. (I wondered silently if he had even one, tiny, thought, that this trip was not going well and that just maybe, they should just turn the hell around and go home to where ever North Dakota or if this was just the way things went for them and that this whole episode was nothing out of the ordinary.) He seemed a little uneasy standing there with me but ultimately unaffected by the current events. As if surely, he would find someone at this hour, where he was to put fuel into his truck for him and then everything would be back on track and off he would go headlong towards the deep blue Pacific Ocean (in a 16' boat). Maybe sensing my surprise at the circumstances he was enduring or his path to get to the West coast, he informed me that it was 70 degrees when he left home that morning and that he was real surprised to find it so cold and snowing here. (not checking the weather before heading into northern Wyoming in May with your boat on the back of your truck.... Priceless)
Wondering about or, Okay, maybe doubting the validity of most everything that was happening at this very moment, I leaned over and looked into the back of the pick up and saw no blown out tire. So I asked him what he did with the damaged tire. For some unknown reason, I should have known, but he had to tell me that he had thrown it into the boat. What I did see in the back of his pickup upon my gander, was their luggage and other miscellaneous personal items completely covered with a thin layer of new crusting snow.
By this time he was completing his fuel pumping and we both silently stared, watching the pump come up to $50, like two guys in an elevator watching the lighted floor indicator. There evidently was nothing of any value left to say ,I guess, except for the thank you he offered and the your welcome and good bye I offered. He opened his driver side door, reached into the truck and took something from the woman in the front seat and turned back out towards me. About to hand me a fifty dollar bill, he grabbed it on each end with both hands and snapping it straight as he did as if in some attempt to prove it was real or to conclude the deal with such a motion. Either way our meeting was complete and as he got back in the truck and began to pull out of the station, I pulled up to the pump to fill up the Prius for our yet unknown destination and possible long night ride. As I stepped out of the car again and watched him leave, I noticed he was headed out into the dark night in the same direction he was not supposed to be going because everything was closed off. I never saw him again and did not here about him until the next morning.
After filling up the Prius (which we lovingly and yet jokingly refer to as the 4 wheel drive Prius for all of the ridiculous terrain we have traveled over and through since embarking on this trip with our little safari vehicle and for right now because of the current weather and road conditions which we would really be much better suited in a four wheel drive vehicle, we will continue to refer to it as our gas miser SUV) we pulled out and headed a just a little ways east and into the very next parking lot we came to, less than a half mile away. It was the entrance of a large closed up lodge building that oddly had cars in the parking lot and lights on in some of the hallways of the building. As I drove slowly through the lot looking at the buildings, I silently considered my options. The main consideration of the moment was, and I am not kidding here, breaking into the building and sleeping inside for the night. The thought of the three of us trying to sleep in out Prius (SUV/safari vehicle) was enough to make me consider breaking in and dealing with the consequences, if any, later. As I continued to drive through the lots and consider what seemed best at the moment and how I would do this deed, I rounded a U-shaped corner at the end of one lot that was leading to the next continuous lot. At the far end of this lot was a vehicle that was obviously occupied, or at least running, as the lights were on, vapor was coming from the exhaust pipe and it was stopped in the middle of the driving lane of the lot, not where you would normally park. Jasper excitedly exclaimed, " I think it's the police!" He was obviously tuned in hoping for his own miracle to get us out of this strange situation.
As we got closer to and began to pull around the running, real SUV, vehicle on the drivers side, we saw that it was not a police vehicle but a running occupied vehicle with the drivers side window open. As we pulled along side, the woman driver stuck part of her upper body out of the open window and used her arms to signal us to stop and talk to her. To our surprise, I think we were surprised, she spoke mostly Spanish and some broken English. Why this should surprise me at all, that we should meet a Spanish speaking group of people in the deep of western Wyoming at 10:30 at night in a snow storm, I am not real sure but it did catch me just a little off guard. I spoke to her first in my terrible Spanish and then in somewhat of a frustrated manner explained to her that Megan speaks Spanish and that the two of them should continue the conversation. It turns out that they too were prevented from traveling any further due to the closed roads and continually, worsening storm. I added in a few comments as we went along and after 4 or 5 minutes finally realized that we were solving nothing by sitting here talking in a weird configuration of two languages and decided that we should head back up the road a bit to where we had seen a building with lights on with a couple of park service police cars parked in front. At this point in the conversation she suggested, asked or insisted, I was not sure which she was doing, that they (three adults in her much larger SUV) get in with us in our car as we go frolicking around trying to find away to safety for the night. I looked somewhat puzzled into the back of our vehicle, I guess trying to figure out how that would work and immediately came to my senses and told her to just follow us. She agreed and off we went, as a mini winter caravan, to see if we could talk to anyone about our dilemma and determine a good course of action, now for two families. As we pulled back onto the open main road, I noticed a police car and a passenger van turning onto the entrance to the lodge building road that we had previously been on. I flashed my lights and blew the horn but neither one of them stopped for us and they continued down the path they were on. So, I continued straight on, instead of following them for some unknown reason, towards the lighted building we saw earlier.
As we got to the, what turned out to be a, park fire/police station with lights shining out from inside, Jasper and I got out of the car and walked through the now 4 inches of snow on the ground to the front door and began banging loudly on the door. Megan headed over to the Spanish speaking families car to continue to make understandable conversation with them. After a few seconds of no response at the front door, I headed around to the side of the building to the large overhead doors and peered into the window openings in the doors. I noticed that Jasper's concern to a second position to his interest in the new fallen snow on the ground and its perfect consistency for making snowballs. This boy loves snow, he never gets enough. Looking in, I saw that there was a truck missing from its spot and that lights were on but, unfortunately, no one was in the building. Trudging back to the car, I decided to now head back to the road to the lodge that we just saw the two vehicles heading down just minutes earlier. Brilliant, EH?
Megan and I both now intrinsically felt somewhat responsible for our new additional, stranded and lost group members, because that is what we do, so we translated my latest plan into Spanglish and once again, our little wayward group, headed down the road, close to where we had started.
As we first turned into the lodge road, I was a little disappointed to find that there was not an immediate siting of those two vehicles but, in just another 100 feet or so I saw one of them, the passenger van, sitting in a loading area of the lodge with the vehicle running. I don't remember what time it was at this point of the evenings festivities but it had to be near 11 PM if not later. I pulled up next to him with my drivers window adjacent to his and rolled mine down to speak to him. He politely joined me in a conversation that began with me explaining what the hell we were doing here and how it came to be. It was immediately obvious to me that I had just given this poor guy way to much information to ask him to process and furthermore for me to be sitting there expecting the proper response, like, I'll take care of everything, began to seem absurd if not out of the realm of possibility for him. (But, you know I stand in the quality of my intentions to create my life) When he had considered briefly what I had just said to him, his only response was to tell me that the park service had closed all the roads. Being very patient and friendly I told him again that that was why we were here and explained that we had picked up this other family on the way who was also stranded here in this snow storm. This reiteration of mine allowed enough time to pass for him to recollect himself, digest what I was saying and to take in the direness of my voice and expression or at least for him to realize, that he could not handle this alone. So he very nicely asked me to follow him around the corner to another parking lot and he would call his boss on the radio and tell him what was going on for us so that they could figure out how they could help us out. This was the first sign of light in the situation. He actually had said, "To see how we can help you out." This was also the first of many soon to come and continually following expressions of generosity and kindness from everyone we met from this point forward. I asked him his name (Chuck) and told him mine and thanked him for taking an interest and taking on trying to find a solution for our issue. He smiled and said, "Sure, your welcome. Now just hang on here while I get in touch with my boss" and rolled up the window to make his radio contact.
Within a minute he rolled the window down again and told us to follow him to the other side of the building as his boss was no on the way down to the lodge to see what he could do for us. As we were talking about this next move another guy pulled into the parking lot where we were. He was driving a large scale, heavy duty, extended pickup truck, pulling a trailer that had a huge piece of equipment on it. (I found out later that he had been driving all day as well from the other side of Wyoming with this piece of well drilling equipment, trying to get back to California via his GPS which had led him through here as the shortest route but also unfortunately into a blinding snowstorm for the last five hours, only to get here and find the roads closed.) As he approached me and Chuck, with a curious, frustrated and befuddled look on his face, he had his cell phone open, poised near his face. We would soon come to find out that it was on speaker and connected with his girlfriend in California. They had obviously been on the phone for most of the hours he had been driving. Although she was silent when he started talking me, she soon spoke up and it was easy to here the frustration and worry in her voice about her bo's issue. I assured him that we were well into handling the situation and that Chuck's boss was on the way down to talk with us and see if he could help us out. I mentioned that he was welcome to join our little group and to wait and see what was about to happen. He was very visibly uptight, like too much caffeine and way to long behind the wheel of this hard to handle rig in the midst of this storm can make you, and he paced as he spoke. He told me of his desire to throw his GPS out the window just before he got to us and to smash his phone on the ground right there were he stood. I instinctively offered that there was no sense in letting the anger get to him and that it was gonna work out the way it would regardless of his anger or some such zen filled mutterings. He looked at me in disbelief of or caught off by my words and mumbled something but also smiled and laughed a little as he turned to go back to his vehicle and wait. I told him that we were going to drive to the other side of the building and to follow us there. So now our enlarging group meandered our way around the snow covered lot, around the building to the original spot of finding our Spanish friends. As we drove around to our new holding spot, Megan told me that she had learned that the Spanish speaking folks were heading for Washington state and that they had come from Phoenix, AZ and had already been driving for twenty two hours at this point when they got caught up here. Our situation of site seeing in Yellowstone for the day was taking a major back seat in regards to all of the unfolding stories of our enlarging group of traveling companions. Also the caring of others and generosity of good people was about to unfold as we found ourselves in the company of people who were in the business of hospitality but who would extended themselves way beyond the call of duty for people they had never met but obviously needed their assistance.
When the boss man arrived, Mark, we found out that he was the Location Manager, which means he is the general manager for the lodge and all of its services and stores and the like. He asked us to stand by as he took at few moments to gather some info and see what he could do to assist us. He told us that the facility was not open yet but that all of the staff that would operate the facility for the summer season was already on site and put up in staff housing, as they were opening for the season for the first day on Friday. During all of this, searching, waiting and talking we had slipped into early Thursday morning and everyone one of us was tired and ready to do anything to get to lie down and rest until the morning.
When Mark came back to us after only five minutes, he told us that he had rooms for us to stay in for the night. He reminded us that they were not open for business yet and that we were about to stay in a hotel lodge that was not fully prepared to have guests. We were so comforted and overjoyed to not have to drive any more and not to have to think about what to do next that I know we would have stayed on the floor in any heated area of the lodge.
We explained the new found solution to our problem to the Spanish speakers and assured then they were OK for the night. They were happy and relieved as well. They were quite the site standing there in the snow storm with their Arizona clothes on (high heels and Capri pants and no coats or jackets of any kind.)
Mark asked us to go into the registration area with the front desk manager (Shauna)that accompanied him and fill out guest registration cards while he went over to the building with the rooms in it and made sure that they were at all ready for us to stay in. We all went and filled out our cards and began to make light conversation now that the pressure was off and shared some of our travel issues as we waited for Mark to return to lead us to our, whatever their condition, luxurious sleeping quarters for the night. We were all much more content then just minutes before but now the tiredness of the day was seeping in and we all could hardly wait to get to the rooms.
When he came back, he led us to our spaces and told us that we were on the first floor and that all of the soon to be staff was on the second floor, so we may here a bit of noise from them but just so we knew that people were supposed to be there and not to worry. I made several acknowledgements to him and Shauna about how great they were being to us and how awesome it was to be treated so well by them in the middle of the night. I also added a request for and a couple of comments about how great it would be if they could just get us some beers as well as the rooms. I mean they are in the hotel business, right? Whats a six pack of two?
Thankfully everyone got the humor, laughed out loud and in seconds, all continued on course. Mark explained that they would not be charging us for the rooms for the night based on the situation we found ourselves in and that if we would just show up at the front desk at 8 AM that he would have chits for us to take to the dining hall for the employees so that we could have complimentary breakfast before we headed on our way, provided we could get on our way. We were all very grateful for their thoughtfulness and way of being with us. None of us had had any supper the night before as a result of being on the road for so long and although we were not really hungry the knowing that breakfast was available put every ones mind at ease. There was certainly no way we could have figured that this would have worked out the way it did. They showed us to our rooms and asked us to check around and see if there was anything we thought we needed. Well we needed soap, shampoo and oh, yeah, sorry to have to ask for this but do you have shower curtains for the showers by any chance? They found everything that we needed. We got little Bear shaped soaps and small complimentary bottles of shampoo and shower curtains that were made for tubs to hang on the shower stall. Man, I'll tell you the nerve of some places! As Shauna handed us the new packages of shower curtains, Mark said, "Did you notice if there were curtain hooks on the poles?" Thankfully there were and except for going to the munchy machine in the lobby of the building we were in, we all went about trying to get settled in for the night. I made a comment to mark before he left us thatthere was a couple out there in a pick up truck and towing a boat that headed backout on to the road and that if they could keep a look out for them and offer then the same kindness it would be greatly appreciated. He assured me that he had told the park police that if they found anyone else to bring them in and that he would put them up for the night. What a great guy he was. So as we lie in bed, coming to rest, Megans last outloud thought, before drifting off to sleep was, I sure wish we had asked the German couple to come with us. They would now also be sleeping indoors and comfortable. I agreed and at that moment could not figure out why I had not made that offer to them.
After that, the only final concern I had left, personally, was that the freezing temperatures put the RV at risk to a small degree. We carry water in a fixed tank and charge the lines that run to the various fixtures in the unit. I was just a little worried about what we would have to deal with the next day if something froze or broke overnight but I easily put it out of mind, to be dealt with as necessary, the following day upon our arrival back to the Tetons campsite with hopefully enough time to get packed up and moved out of the site before our 11 AM vacate time. I spent an hour plus into the night capturing the details of the day in the first blog of this story and then put the computer down at 2:45 AM and attempted to get quite and enjoy the warmth and spaciousness of the room and the comfort of the bed. I was still amazed about the story and looked forward to thanking the kind people of the night again in the AM at breakfast.