Bound for Rexburg—Part I

It was the first few days of January. The Christmas and New Year’s vacation break was nearly over, and it was almost time for classes to begin.

Our eldest son, Trevor, had been admitted to BYU-Idaho, a four-year university which more or less dominates the town of Rexburg, Idaho. Situated not too far from the Wyoming border, in the far east corner of the state, there’s not much of a reason to go there other than for school. Vacation destinations such as the national parks of the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone are fairly close to there, however.

Some of us had traveled to Rexburg previously while attending a family reunion held in nearby Idaho Falls. That was during the summer, with blue skies and temperatures into the mid-90s. I’d personally been through at least a part of Idaho on several occasions, but neither myself or any member of our immediate family had ever been to Rexburg in the wintertime.

My parents, sister, and several friends of the family, had. All, upon hearing we would be venturing to Rexburg in early January, were none too short on advice, ranging from getting tire chains for our vehicle, to layering tips for staying warm, to horror stories usually involving wind and snow.

I’m not sure how much of all of this Trevor took in (ah, to be 20-something again and blissfully unaware of one’s mortality), but my wife, Angela, and thus, me (albeit to a lesser extent) were keenly aware that driving to Idaho could be a hazardous undertaking. I’ve never purchased tire chains in my life, but because of her insistence, for this trip, I did.

We would be driving our 2006 Dodge Durango, a mid-sized SUV, with all wheel drive. It would be loaded down with Trevor’s stuff and five human beings. While we still needed to be careful, and while we wouldn’t be able to handle five-foot snow drifts (nor two-foot ones, for that matter), we were taking every reasonable precaution.

Which included a decent amount of praying, too. Typically with any trip of a major distance, we will ask for protection from all kinds of danger, starting a day or so before we go, and following up the day of. I can only say it’s worked, since every time I can think of, we’ve made it safely to our destination. In this case, for our trip to Rexburg, the praying for safe roads, good weather, careful fellow drivers and that our Durango would perform properly had all begun at least a week out.

I believe it had the desired effect, weather-wise, anyway. For the few days leading up to our trip, a weather event called an inversion had settled over southern Idaho, dropping the temperatures more than what was already normally cold, into the teens and single digits in some places. Lows would actually go negative. But that meant no new precipitation, and for as far as I could tell from online cameras and state road updates, normal, dry pavement. Whether it would hold to the latter part of the week and into the weekend, was yet to be seen.

Our objective was to drive as much as possible during the day, hole up in Boise at a hotel on the way up, drop off Trevor and his fiancée, Ana, in Rexburg, then get back to Boise to spend the night before making the final trek home. For the first leg of our journey, that specifically meant leaving no later than eight thirty in the morning, to arrive in the four o’clock hour in Boise.

Leaving on time is no small task for us. Almost without exception, we will leave later than desired. I won’t name names, but the culprits are generally the same every time. However, somehow, we actually rolled out of our driveway on schedule, with Trevor at the wheel.

TO BE CONTINUED