Freaky Weather - Roads Closed- Accidents...

I had a horrible experience last night. I left the house around 9:15 to go clean the credit union and took Packer with me to help. We got out to Main Street and it was dead stop so we decided to go the back way around into Saratoga Springs and then back down Redwood Road. What a HUGE mistake. As we were headed the back way we hit major ice and went sliding left and right into the on coming lane. Luckily the on coming traffic wasn't close, yet… We kept sliding and I couldn't stop the car, braking seemed to be making it worse. So I let my foot of the brake and we ended up about a foot away from falling down into a ditch, a ditch that probably would have ruined the car. Yikes. My heart was pounding so fast and luckily all the cars behind us were able to stop and wait for us to get straightened out. As we continued to press forward (we couldn't turn around and go home at this point) we yet again hit another ice patch as we were approaching an accident. I thought for sure we were going to slam right into the cop car. The big truck behind us also hit the ice and was swerving in every direction trying not to hit us. After some time and driving 10 mph we made it to redwood road and were headed north again. But it was dead stop in that direction as well. Both Redwood Road and Main Street were closed. You could see accidents everywhere and police lights flashing in every direction. They had search and rescue people on snowmobiles helping people who ran out of gas, had health problems or were stuck and had to abandon their cars. There were abandoned cars all over the place and we were out in the middle of open farm land between Saratoga Springs homes and Smiths. Our car was on empty and nearly out of gas. I had no idea how much longer we had before the car died. We waited and watched for quite along time as snow and 70 mph winds continued to blow.

Finally traffic began to move again and they were detouring everyone down some small country road towards Eagle Mountain, when it was our turn we were able to move forward and continue on towards Smiths, which was another 5 miles or so. We did finally make it there and I realized I had no wallet to buy gas. Oops! Luckily Packer saved the day and had 10 dollars in his wallet.It was now time to clean the credit union. We had made it this far, we might as well while traffic dies down. So we got into the credit union and I realized the alarm wasn't on, well then out of a room came a couple of people. The funny thing is that our first instinct was to run, so we started heading for the door when they came out the room and saw us. We probably looked so stupid! I just explained that we were there to clean; they were actually stranded at the credit union and couldn't go home. So they ended up staying the night. It was a horrible experience; I’ve never experienced anything like it. We left at 9:15 and didn't get home until 11:45. Aaron left for work at 5:30 this morning and was sliding everywhere on the roads. It took him twice as long to get to work but we are happy he made it safely.Schools and roads everywhere are closed for awhile this morning. Tooele got something like 4 feet of snow. We've got a couple of inches but we've got more snow drifts and ice. My parents got at least 6 inches.We are so sick of this crazy cold, snowy and icy weather. We want spring!