Rapid City Adventure - The story of the elk

November 26, 2007

The adventure begins.

Actually the beginning started a few months ago when Mar and I decided that the family van was showing its age. We decided to look for a new car. Today that search paid fruit. We spent the morning buying - now don't get too excited - we traded in our Town and Country for a

New Town and Country - 2008 model. We feel goodabout it. Here is a picture of the new Town and Country with Laramie Peak in the background.

Yes, this picture was taken on the next portion of the adventure. Mar and I drove to Rapid City, Sout Dakota for the long Thanksgiving Day weekend. We just thought it would be fun to get away, so we did. It is about a six hour drive from home. Getting a little bit of a later start, it got dark during the trip.

After only six hours of new car ownership, right after sundown, we saw a whole herd of elk real close up. In fact, about a dozen of them were right in the middle of the road. Have you ever tried to maneuver around a dozen 250 pound elk. Let me tell you it is not easy. For me it was impossible. We hit a big buck on the right front corner of the car. That does not do wonders on a new car. We left a portion of the bumper there on the road. It crumpled in the right front quarter panel - the door won't open all of the way. But we have a lot to be thankful for. We were not hurt. The car still functions perfectly. We hit it a glancing blow so none of the airbags went off. We slowed down enough to not do more than $2000-3000 worth of damage. The anti lock brakes and Electronic stability worked great. Really, I almost guided a car under full brake from 65 miles per hour through a herd of giant animals and almost made it through.

The elk wasn't as lucky as we were. He is probably really hurt. I know he is very bald in one spot becasue I took 4 giant handfuls of elk fur out of the door frame. No we didn't save any of it.

Really, we were blessed tremendously. This could have been a whole lot worse. We have heard terrible stories about people hitting much smaller animals. We could have easily been stranded in the desolation of eastern Wyoming. We could have been hurt. We could have been hurt real bad. Someone could have had the horrible job of calling our children and telling them we had been hurt or killed. (Brea, this was just ten minutes after the Assine D'Pepi recipe call.) But we weren't hurt and we feel really blessed and watched over. We are really grateful for our safety. This year, for us, that gets a whole feather of the thankful turkey. There are tender mercies involved in all of our lives all of the time. Sometimes they are more evident than at others. We had a dozen or so just today.

We are at our motel now. We have decided to stay here an extra day, becasue this motel is having a free Thankgiving Day Turkey dinner for all of the guests. Wahoo!!!!