Interstate Bobsled

It can never be said that I don't learn from my mistakes. Today we began our road trip back to Phoenix from Idaho Falls. The trip through Salt Lake City was still fresh on my mind and I had every intention of finding an alternative route so that I wouldn't be stuck in Utah traffic for two hours like on the way up. I was hoping that I could eliminate going through Salt Lake completely but Trina and the children wanted to stop and see some of the sights as long as we were going through. Besides, Ashley informed me that Salt Lake City now had a Hard Rock Cafe and she reminded me that I didn't have a pin from there yet. Hmmm, she did have a point. And after all, how bad could the freeway be in Utah anyway? We would be going through there in the middle of the day so they wouldn't possibly close it, would they? Three hours into our trip home, we arrived at the Salt Lake City limits and we were greeted by long lines of traffic and disappearing and reappearing lanes. When we approached what should have been our exit, we were instead greeted by large barricades informing us of impending road closures. A few miles later, what was a four lane freeway was now a one lane road with large concrete barriers on each side. Every quarter mile was a sign which displayed our current speed or lack of it. After a mile of this, I suddenly realized that they had turned the freeway into a bobsled run. We were careening out of control with only one lane visible and blind corners at every turn. The one difference was instead of a sled, I was piloting a white Suburban and we had no helmets on. The kids were screaming to slow down except for Dakota who sat in the back seat with is hands in the air yelling to make the last turn. We were finally able to find an exit and slowed to a stop as we arrived at the Hard Rock Cafe. The kids each piled out of the car, their knuckles still white from where they were holding on to the back of the seats. Let's see the Jamaicans do that!