Stuck!

Against our better judgement, we headed out into the dessert on what was considered an easy off road trail to find a remote camping spot for the night. Around 11:00 a.m. I struck a patch of wet, green clay that was the slickest, stickiest mud I have ever seen. The road was on a ledge heading down into a canyon and the road was sloped the wrong way. I knew if we did make it down the hill without going over the edge, there was no way we'd ever make it back up. Too scared to try, I asked Chris to try backing up. Precise driving was required because I had just driven around a large rock lying in the road with only inches to spare between the rock, our car, and the edge. It was immediately apparent that backing up was not an option - we had absolutely no steering in the mud, and any attempt to go down caused our car to slide closer to the edge of a slippery slope slanted the wrong way. We did rent a 4X4 this time, but the grocery-getter tires and lack of a limited slip differential dampened our fun several times during the trip.

Being the start of the Jeep Jamboree week in Moab, we decided to wait for a Jeeper with a winch to come by and un-stick us. So we read books and waited. And waited. When the rain stopped, we got out and scraped half of Utah's desert off our tires and made a cobblestone path in the mud to direct our tires in the right direction, and off we went. The mud dried faster than my soil scientist husband expected and we were able to make it down and back up the hill with aid of our homemade rocky road. Total stuck time: about five hours.