I'm grateful for 4-wheel drive

If you know our family very well, you know that we are pretty outdoorsy.  We love camping and driving in the mountains, Nate loves fishing, hunting, mountain biking, etc. Anyway, since it hasn't rained in awhile in Idaho, we decided to take advantage of the sun and take a "leisurely" drive up into the foothills.  We were doing really good for the most part and then we got onto a forest road that would take us to Palisades Reservoir through the Caribou National Forest.  The roads were dry and we thought that we were doing good even though we did have to drive around some big puddles.  The further we drove down the road, the bigger the "puddles" got and occasionally Nate would have to get out and assess the gooey-ness of the puddles but we were still doing good. Until we got to one particular place in the "road".  Nate went and assessed and instead of deciding to turn around (which we really should have done at this point) we decided to risk it and drive partially up on the side of a hill and try not to slide into a major rut full of mud and water.  IT didn't work so we ended up sliding into the rut and barely making it out of the hole, but we made it and we thought at this point there was no turning back so we HAD to go forward.  Until we got to an even worse part of the "road".  It was a mud bog about 15 yrds long, ending in a creek washing across the road.  We decided not to risk being stranded in the middle of the forest and turned around. Which meant we would have to go back through the treacherous hole we had barely made it out of the first time we went through it.  We  barely made it through again but were safely back on dry ground.  Well, on the way back to civilization we were getting tired of rolling the windows up and down every time we crossed a mud hole so I (in my all my genius) thought "Hey, I'll just open up the sun roof and then we won't have to worry about rolling our windows up." Yeah, I'm a genius.  The next hole we drove through splashed water up over the top of the SUV and into the sun roof, drenching me, Nate, and Lilly who was in the back seat.  It was really funny but I think Lilly was kind of traumatized. We finally made it out of the muddy-ness and had a little picnic lunch while recovering from distress we had just put ourselves through.

It was quite the little trip and will be one adventure in the Idaho mountains that we will not be forgetting any time soon.  I wish we would have taken pictures of the whole fiasco but you'll  just have to be satisfied by the pictures of how muddy our car is.  Thanks for the adventure Nate.
 

 Here's one picture that you can kind of see the mud in but that was a very small puddle compared to the monsters we went through.

 This was after our adventure.  It was clean before we left Idaho Falls.
(Click on the pic to see the whole extent of the muddy-ness)

<

The Beautiful Tetons from the Idaho side.

  Picnicking after the adventure.

So needless to say, we are all very grateful for 4-wheel drive.  Nate and I have agreed never to try to drive down that road again.