turkey weekend in MT

thanksgiving has come and gone again. a stressful holiday for many, traveling, family, preparing the feast. nerves are short and everyone is trying to maximize the four day vacation to fit all the visiting and family activities as they can into this short vaca. this seldomely works and everyone is relieved to get back to the norm. i generally tend to block out this over-crammed holi and go into the weekend with little expectations. i find myself enjoying it more and notice less bickering.

this year my family met at my brother house in MT. my other brother and gf came from WA and my parents and sister came from MN. luckily my sis flew to denver and rode up with me in the car. saved on some of the driving though she slept most of the way. i enjoyed seeing my family and especially my new nephew as well as my other nephew. you can view pics of my family's turkey weekend here.

all in all the weekend was great. the worse part was the traveling of course, usually is, but when i drive to MT i always hit horrific weather. on the way up the roads were wonderful so i knew i was in for it on the return trip. sure enough, the night before we all left there was the first MT snow storm of the year. it didn't quit and i knew we'd be driving on some sketchy roads so we decided to leave at 2300 hrs sunday night because i had to get mary to DIA by the time her plane departed at 1500 hrs on monday. the roads were horrible and no more than 2 hrs into the trip i smacked a deer. i hit it pretty hard, it bounced of the hood and flew over the rest of the car. thankfully it was a rental. so were proceeded on our merry way hitting the interstate which was glare ice. i was extremely tired, the roads were better, so i decided to let mary drive. i fell quickly asleep only to be woken up by "miah...help". mary had the car fishtailing down I90 and the roads were once again pure ice. i suddenly grabbed the wheel and directed us no more than a foot away from the back end of a semi. a close call indeed. so i drove the rest of the way, we lost the ice somewhere near the MT-WY border and switched it with extremely high winds until we hit denver. we even saw a semi on it's side that the wind blew over. wasn't fun. but we got her to the airport with an hour to spare and her plane ended up being delayed anyways.

my brother and parents trip were just as pleasant. thankfully we all made it home safely. i'm currently fighting with the rental car agency trying to get out of paying for the damage because the tires were extremely bald, with no more than 1/8 in. of tread on them...i'll let you know how it turns out.

i hope everyelses t-day was great and the travels were safe.

until next time...