Pioneer Trek: The drive to Wyoming

Ryan and I were called to be a Ma and Pa for our stakes pioneer trek to Martin's Cove. I was a little nervous about bonding with kids that I'd never even met but we had a great time. We didn't even find out who our "kids" were until the night of. We checked in at the church at 10:00 pm, met our 8 kids briefly and loaded the buses at midnight for our all night drive to Wyoming.

Right out of the gate, we hit a snag in the plans. We were assigned on bus number one and were sitting right behind the trek coordinators so I got to hear all the fun details and phone calls that went on. 5 minutes on the freeway they (the trek coordinators) got a call from a leader on bus 5. They said that bus #4 was smoking and what should they do? We asked our bus driver. His response was that the driver of bus 4 had gauges and if he had a problem he would pull over. A minute they get another call. Bus #4 now has sparks flying from the bottom of the bus. We immediatly slow down and let bus 4 pass us and we pull up behind. But it wasn't just sparks flying, we had full on flames coming out from under that bus. So we all pull over. Kids are scrambling out of the bus, 911 is called and we're frantically searching for a fire extinguisher. Can you imagine, 6 buses lining I-15 at 12:30 in the morning with 55 people on the side of the road. The fire was put out and while the kids were getting their buckets from off the bottom of the bus, the tire blows. It was loud. I was on the bus right behind it and it shook our bus. The poor kids dropped their stuff and scrambled. What happened was that the bus driver on bus 4 didn't release the parking brakes which caused the fire. Then the brakes were so hot, it popped the tire.

You are thinking that our trials were over. Oh no. This is just the beginning my friends. We had enough room on the other 5 buses for the kids from bus 4 so we load up and begin our drive again. By now, it's something like 1:30 am. Our bus driver puts the bus in gear and steps on the gas. Nothing. He's so confused. Why isn't the bus going? After a minute the bus starts rolling. Phew! Off we go. A few minutes down the freeway, we start smelling smoke. We just figure that we're smelling our bus driver because he was the one under bus 4 putting out the fire. Then the smell gets worse. People from the back of the bus start yelling. "Hey, there is smoking coming out of our bus." Just great. So we all pull over again. This time we were in Idaho Falls and we pull into a gas station. We all pile out of the bus and watch our bus smoke. Our driver did the exact same thing the other bus driver did. Forgot to release the parking brakes. Now what are we supposed to do? The company that we had hired to drive us only had one other bus and it was too small to fit us. It's late and cold and our trek coordinator looked like she was going to cry. After an hour, the bus company deemed our bus safe so we all piled back on. Let me tell you that I was very hesitant to get back on that bus! Our poor bus driver got canned and we got a new one, a very experienced driver, so I felt a little better knowing that he would release the parking brakes.

Off we go. 2 1/2 hours late. By now, I'm pretty wired and couldn't sleep. Praying that nothing else would go wrong. And that our brakes are okay. The rest of the drive went somewhat smoothly. We only had to stop once on a hill because our bus started to overheat and we found out the the person with some of the food for breakfast drove an hour in the wrong direction. . . . . It's okay to laugh. I'm laughing just thinking about it all. What a night. But hey, we made it! We didn't turn around and bag the whole thing. After the second bus incident, some of the youth thought we were going to give up and head home. What a great teaching moment. The pioneers had so may trials but they didn't give up either. They keep on trudging along until they made it to the valley!

I figured that I had so much information that I should break it up into days so I wouldn't bombard you! So more to come in the next few days. Oh, and as soon as I get pictures I will post them as well. We weren't allowed to bring cameras but we had a photography committee that took tons so hopefully we'll get our CD of pictures soon!