none of the events in this story have been fabricated or exaggerated.
It was a cold, cloudy, Sunday morning, in the sandhills of Valentine Nebraska
We decided we would float the river despite the fact that it was cold.
We got on the river; t-shirts and shorts on, radio blastin' -- we were the ONLY people on the river and it was fun!
Since it had rained almost 2 inches the night before the river was movin' so it only took us 3 hours to get to our drop off point, by this time the sun was out and it was nice so we decided to sit at the picnic tables and sun ourselves!
An hour in the sun and it was time to go.
We didnt really know where we were in relation to the hwy but decided to head East instead of west back up the river because Ean said it was 10min out of the way.
So East we went.
That morning on our way to our drop off point the roads were sloppy. Wet sandy roads are worse then wet mud/dirt roads. They look dry but they aren't and you slide around like crazy.
So we are headed east and not really paying attention to our surroundings because the GPS was telling us where to go and that a hwy was 25 miles East.
We stopped and talked to some cows that were in our way.
We had been driving for almost 15 miles and hadn't see a car, a house or any signs of civilization besides the cows
WHEN......
we came around a corner and got stuck
in a really big mud puddle.Ean and Alyssa pushed while I tried to steer us out.
NO LUCK
Ean put some sticks under the tires to try and get us some traction
NO LUCK
I decided I would call the place that we rented the tubes from and see if they could come get us out.
This is where it starts to get scary...kind of like the movie The Hills Have Eyes or any other scary movie.
I get out my phone, which is flashing because its almost dead. And it says
NO SERVICE.
Ean's phone is always dead and Alyssa's didn't have any reception either.
Ean starts to look on the GPS to see where we are and all, ALLLLLL of the roads around us are unnamed roads, unnamed???? WTF.
So we decided that we would start walking and hope and pray that we saw someone.
Now, my sister, she isn't athletic at all, so any sort of walk for her is a big deal, so she complained a lot and Ean and I decided that if worst came to worse we would eat her 1st ;)
Ean and I had just ran a 1/2 marathon the day before and could hardly move so walking was quite painful for all of us.
Alyssa was barefoot because she lost her shoes in the river and i only had flip flops on and ean had on water sandals.
I taught everyone how to do CPR just in case.
So we walked about 2 miles and we came to a cross section and we couldn't remember which way we came from so we randomly decided to go straight and in the ditch we saw a sign that said Lee ranch 12.5 miles with an arrow, but we had no idea which way the arrow was supposed to be pointing because it had fallen down in the ditch.
It was just a grim reminder of how far we were from people.
At this point it started to thunder and sprinkle.
About a mile later(we knew how far we were going because we had the GPS) we saw a mail box. We walked up their half mile drive way and they were home.
I on the way up armed myself with a sharp rock that I put in my pocket. I was sure we were going to die, but I really didn't want to walk 10 more miles.
The nice couple gave us a ride to our car and pulled us out!
They gave us better directions and we made it back to my moms in about 4 hours.
All three of us were covered in mud up to our knees and Alyssa had mud in her hair.
Next time we will get directions before we start tubing.
ahhh, always a lesson learned.
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