Anniversary Weekend Part 1

So Mason and I celebrated our 2 year anniversary the other weekend. We decided to head off to Park City. After work, I made Mason stop at the bank to withdrawal some cash just in case we needed it, which we did end up needing. As we were heading on the freeway to Park City it started raining. As we got near Lambs Canyon we came to a stop. There was a major fatal accident that you can read about here http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=10869072. We arrived before any cops, ambulances, or fire trucks. The accident happened how we guessed, the Fedex truck had crossed over by accident into oncoming traffic most likely due to weather conditions and hit a car.

I think that we were very lucky because KSL reports the accident to be about 6:30 pm and when I looked at the clock when we came to a stop it was 6:37 pm. Who knows if we would have been there the same time, but I'm glad that we took a 10 minute detour to the bank before heading off.


It soon became crazy, as a least 10 cops, 5 ambulances, and 5 fire trucks sped by. Most came one by one in the beginning and then they started coming in groups. Mason and I watched as 5 cops sped by in the a row. 


In this picture you can see the Fedex truck with the second cargo part is turned over. Also I think that you can see the blue car in which the guy that died was in.

Then this guy behind us started organizing the cars a bit so that there was a break between us and the cars behind us. He then signal the cop cars, ambulances and firetrucks to cut across us because they were using the exit to get off and then quickly back on to get to the accident. This worked great for awhile until some guy all of a sudden was behind us and decided to block the way, not just a little, but completely blocking the way. Mason pulled forward so that the guy could pull up and not be the in the way but for some reason he stayed were he was and never moved.

Soon more cops came and blocked off just behind us and started moving people off the freeway and onto the exit. By that point Mason and I had been stopped for probably for about an hour. So we talked and decided to see if the exit had some way of getting back on the freeway and bypassing the accident.

So we turn a bit around and went off the exit. The exit led to either going back to Salt Lake or to a dirt road. We decided on the dirt road. As we went by we saw a chuck of a car, which i tried to take a picture of but couldn't.

Well we followed the dirt road for a long time. People that were going the opposite way that used to be ahead of us were signaling to us to turn around. We kept going though because we figured there wasn't much else to do and we might as well see what was at the end of the road.

We got to the end of the road to an archery range.

Mason thought it would be a fun story to tell if we kept going and went and saw if we could go on the range and try out our archery skills. Although I agreed that it would be a good story and fun, I said no because I was hungry and it was wet, cold, and raining. So we headed to Sugar House to eat and waste some time while they cleared up the accident. As we were heading back to the exit several people had pulled off the dirt road and looked like they were going to wait it out. We got back on the freeway heading to Salt Lake and the traffic on the other side was almost all the way backed up to Salt Lake.

We decided to go to Olive Garden and for dessert we had the donuts/scones that you dip into chocolate. YUM! I think though at this point, after our main course, we were too full to truly enjoy them so we'll have to go back to have them by themselves.

We then went home to check on traffic updates. We waited until after 9 pm when they issue a report saying that they reopened two lanes of traffic. This time we took Emigration Canyon to try and cut off some of the backed up traffic. 

Emigration was really creepy. Now not only was it rainy but it was also very dark and foggy. Emigration also curves a lot. We had on the radio the classical station which was playing erie music to match and now we knew that the accident was fatal. We took the canyon slow.

We then got back onto I-80 East and Mason estimates that we probably cut off half of the traffic. It was still slow going and took us a half hour to get past the accident.

As soon as we were past the accident, people began speeding off, which Mason and I thought was pure craziness. I'm sure that they were glad to be past the accident just as we were but really, yeah go ahead a cause another accident, that's real smart! I assume that they didn't know that the accident was fatal like we did and so we used more caution.

Finally we arrived at our hotel and it was a huge relief!

I was excited for a nice relaxing bath and a warm fireplace.

We stayed at the Canyons Resort hotel. The only cons were having to be out so early (yes 11 am is early for me) especially because we got there just before 11 pm, so we had the room for 12 hours and they also charged us $16 for parking (they informed us that it was this price whether we did valet or we parked ourselves, we did valet).

Stayed tuned for Part 2!