Forest Fires Headache
Submitted by
Valorie on Tue, 07/10/2007 at 10:27am.
Jodi and Dave sold their house in Denver and last weekend moved all of their belongings to St. George, UT. It is a 9 hour trip at best when not driving a moving truck. They arrived in St. George Saturday morning and with the help of Dave's parents and a couple of locals, everything was unloaded in a few hours. Saturday night the raging forest fires caused the closure of I15 for about 60 miles from Cedar City north to Scipio. Cove Fort was evacuated. Sunday morning the freeway was opened and Dave and Jodi set off about noon to return to Denver as they still work in Denver and now live in a Residence Inn. Keep in mind Jodi is also 8 1/2 months pregnant. The following--in Jodi's own words--is what occurred a few hours later:
hahahhaha oh boy. SOOOOOOOOO The closed area that was closed Saturday was between Beaver and Scipio. We're just past Beaver yesterday when we all get slowed down and they make us get off the 15 and get back on going south. They closed the freeway, no joke, like 2 minutes before we got to the cutoff point. Can you believe that???? There were only 10 cars in front of us as we started to get off the freeway. By the time we got off the freeway and turned around and heading south on the 15 there was already a backup of tons of cars at the closing point that was like a mile long. So we missed it by like 2 minutes, but I'm SURE glad we weren't half hour later because then we would have been in the long backup line that was created because everyone was being directed off the freeway and turned around. So we had to backtrack on the 15 south about 20 miles to the Highway 20 that we took east to the 89. We didn't have reception so we couldn't call to find out if the 70 was closed, and if so, how much of it - to Sevier, to Richfield, to Salina - so we headed north on the 89 until we got to Maryvale just south of Big Rock Candy Mountain. Finally we had reception and they said we could get on the 70 at Richfield and head east. YEAH! Because if not we would have had to go back down the 89 to the something east, and then once we got further east, head north again to catch the 70 at a further eastern point. That would have been another hour detour. Just the 20 to the 89 to 70 cost us an hour and a half. And the traffic wasn't bad. You should have SEEN the south lane though. ALL traffic from the 15 south was diverted onto the 89 south, plus all the people that were heading west on the 70 were pushed off onto the 89 south. It was bumper to bumper for the 89 south. The gas stations all along the 89 I'm sure made BANK this weekend. Long line for the restroom but I had to wait since there was no other option. It wasn't sunny around that area because there was so much smoke it made it look overcast like at the beach. Didn't see any flames but that's because we couldn't ever get close enough. So we left St. George at 1 and got to Denver at 11:30. Not tooo bad.
Our room is nice. We had a choice of two hotels and we picked the nicer one, it just got remodeled a couple years ago so it's clean and new. Bosco has the morning poop and potty down already. Straight out to the grass and does his business. We have to go to my friends house tonight to pick up all our food in her fridge and all our other stuff. I'm wearing flipflops at work today because I forgot to leave dress shoes out. Oh well, I don't care. :-)
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