A Parking Brake and a Prayer

Read on, as we rejoin the Davis family in their summer off-roading adventure in Pike National Forest. We last left the Davis family with their minivan stuck on the side of a cliff' as a result of following a "back road" deep into the huge forest. Previously that day, they had climbed to the top of Devil's Head fire observatory and enjoyed the wonderful view. Little did they know, their adventure had not ended with getting lost and having wildlife encounters!

I instructed the kids to go back to their "waiting spot" up the road and asked them to be praying as I scanned to make sure there wasn't any wildlife stalking them.

I got in the van and did my "get in the van routine." Mirrors, check. Seat, check. Seatbelt, check. PARKING BREAK, umm...

The parking break was engaged! I quickly thought back to how long it had been since I put it on out of habit. I feared Travis might go ahead and leave me out in the dark with the wildlife if he realized what I'd done. I remember putting it on about 2 hours into our being stuck, and just before getting out on my signal-searching walk.

Travis had been trying, unsuccessfully, for the last hour (at least) to get the van unstuck whilst it had the parking break on. All of his hard work in the last hour had been for nil because I thoughtlessly put the parking break on!

"Crap! TRAVIS..." I hollered out at him as he was under the van putting the floor mats under the tires for extra traction for our last "getting unstuck" attempt. I didn't even wait for a response. "The parking break was on. I'm so sorry. It's been on since I left to go find a signal."

His head popped up and he stood up straight to look at me. "You mean the parking break has been on the last 4 or 5 times I tried to move the van?"

"Yes," I matter-of-factly said, waiting for the scolding.

Travis smiled and let out a chuckle. "Well, that explains a lot, he said. I kept smelling something, thinking it was the rubber from the tires spinning in their places. I was smelling the rubber from the parking break! I also wondered why in the heck the van wasn't moving, because I had done about everything I could think and the van still wasn't budging. I was baffled because I could find or see nothing that seemed to be getting in the way of the wheels moving."

I breathed a sigh of relief. "Okay, well, watch out. I'm gonna try it again. I bet it goes this time." Travis finished putting the rubber floor mats under the tires that he had dug out, just for extra measure. I took the parking break off, whispered and extra prayer, and steadily pushed the accelerator.

The van moved!

Let me now point out that God had promptly and directly answered the prayer we had prayed 5 minutes earlier. The kids were cheering and grinning as they watched me pull the van closer to where they were standing.

I heard Jillian yell, "It's unstuck! God unstuck the van!"

Justis smiled and yelled, "Daddy, I knew God would get us out of here!"

Travis was hollering, "Jae, don't stop! Don't stop! Keep pulling up! I'm gonna direct you, and you're gonna have to back up. Watch my hands and listen, and go the way I tell you, okay!? Put it in reverse now, but don't stop completely!"

I got to a speed just fast enough to prevent us from getting stuck again and carefully switched to reverse.

"Turn the wheel right!" Travis said as he motioned. "Now left a little. Now a hard right. A HARD right."

Well, in true Jae form, I decided after the second turn of the wheel per Travis's instruction, that I NEEDED to do my own thing. In my mind doing the wrong thing was justified because I had to make sure I didn't back off a cliff, above anything else. I was quickly reminded that Travis wasn't telling me to make a hard right for the fun of it.

"Crrrrreeeeeaaaaak," the whole van went.

"JAE! WHAT did I tell you?! I said hard right! Do you know your right from your left?"

"Well, I didn't want to drive off the cliff, so I turned it the other way."

"Jae, I'm standing right here and can see where you're going better than you can. Do you really think I would steer you off a cliff?"

Doing directly the opposite of something God, my husband, or one of my parents usually proves to be disastrous. You'd think I'd have lived long enough to remember this when I'm contemplating doing my own thing.

"Well [wait for it...], I'M SORRY! I was wrong." I admitted.

"Well," Travis retorted, "You just drove right into the rut!"

"Well, we can't do anything about it now. I'm gonna just have to keep backing."

The van had been moving during this whole conversation, and so I let my foot off of the break a little more to get backing. The van made HORRIFIC creaking noises. The sound was like a huge steel fixture slowly falling down. Travis later told me that the van was actually suspended on two, opposite wheels when I made the wrong turn over that rut. Needless to say, we'll be getting the alignment double-checked next time the van goes in for an oil change!

I kept backing down a little way until it was safe to stop and switch drivers and let the kids back in. The kids had been following the van down as I backed down in the headlights. Travis got in and continued backing until we came to that clearing that had been a ways back, so we could turn around.

As if we needed more to contend with, we realized the roads did not have signs facing our way for the trip out of the park. We stopped and looked at all of the little "roads" going everywhere and wondered how we were going to find our way out.

Well, the good thing about being lost in a national forest in the dark, is that headlights cast shadows on tire tracks, making them discernible. Only then did we realize we were the only set of highway radials that had traveled ANY of the roads. All the other tire marks were, um, OFF-ROAD VEHICLES!! Identifying our tire tracks was fairly easy, so we just prayed they were visible at every turn we made along the way.

I kept checking the cell phones for service as Travis followed our tire tracks. I FINALLY got a weak signal at around 10:30, so I sent out a text to Travis's sister Holly with our general location so someone could come looking for us in the event that nobody had heard from us by morning.

Did I mention we were VERY low on fuel? We had 3/4 of a tank when we entered the park that day. We were almost down to empty by the time we started to retrace our tracks back out of the park. Again, nature helped us out, and the majority of the ride to the nearest town with a gas station was mostly a coast downhill.

We ended up making a complete circle, by the time all was said and done. We ended up having to come back up to the cabin through Denver and Colorado springs, due to having to go where the nearest fuel station was. I switched back over to driving once we got gas, and I drove us home as Travis and the kids (who were ALL exhausted) could sleep the rest of the way in stress-free peace. We got back to the cabin around 1:30 a.m. Colorado time. That's 2:30 a.m. Kansas time!

We were already making light of the very serious situation we were in while we were still "navigating" the very serious situation. The next day our adventure had turned into a funny story. Our family kind of came together under the stress and absurdity of that day, amazingly.

Turns out the pressure and testing and the absurd turn of events that day turned out to be a family and marriage-building experience. Travis and I were forced to figure it out when we didn't agree. The kids were so very good amidst the craziness and unknown of being lost. They faced a situation (probably some of them for the first time ever) where they had to rely ultimately on God's help and trusting Him for their safety and security, because the situation was much bigger than Mommy and Daddy!

Travis asked me, "What do you want to do today," when we woke up and got around the next morning. I looked at him to see if he was serious and I replied, "NOTHING! I want to stay right here at the cabin for a day."

Our bodies were physically sore from the washboard and roller coaster roads. We discovered that real off-roading takes every muscle in the human body (ouch!)!

We did go to Wal Mart in Woodland park the day after our adventure, just to buy a couple of board games we could enjoy lounging around and playing together. We also stopped at a gas station to give the minivan a thorough inside-and-out cleaning. A thin powder of dust covered EVERYTHING in and outside of the van. The seats were covered in Colorado rocks and sand from Travis lying on his back under the van much of our trip.

I went in to pay for a car wash and saw the map display at the front of the gas station. I still had a few questions that were left unanswered about our trip. "Where were we when we got stuck? Was it a real road? Did ANY map have all of those little roads marked?" I picked up a few state maps that showed no little roads in Pike National Forest. I Then spotted a row of Colorado ATV and ORV (Off-road vehicle) guides. "Hmmm..." I thought. "Worth a look."

Sure enough, there in the index of one of the guides was the ATV/ORV trails of Pike National Forest. I went ahead and bought the book and took it out to the minivan before opening it. I was so curious and full of suspense, I think I could compare my feeling to Charlie's anticipation of finding the golden ticket in his chocolate bar!

Travis snatched the book up first and went straight to the page showing the "section" of Pike National Forest that we had been lost in. I said, "Look for 351. That's the road we followed."

Travis said, "I don't see it," after he had looked for a few seconds. There were 3 levels of difficulty that the roads were assigned. The difficulty levels were distinguished on the map by different colors. Green for easy, blue for moderate, and red for advanced/difficult. Travis finally spotted 351, but it wasn't marked in any of those colors, BECAUSE IT WASN'T A TRAIL ACKNOWLEDGED OR MAINTAINED BY THE NATIONAL PARK. There 351 was, marked in a faint brown color with a black arrow pointing to the road that simply said, "VERY DIFFICULT."

We both gasped in disbelief before we looked at each other and we bust out laughing. With God's help, we and the Swagger Wagon had "officially" survived some serious off-roading. I know that day was one Travis and I will never forget, and I'm pretty sure even Jillian, who was barely 4 at the time, will always remember it, too! I personally think we should be the Toyota Sienna's new poster family. :)