Holy cow!

Picture it: July 23, 2009. It is about 10:30 at night and it is DARK outside. We are driving along a winding road through the back country of Wyoming between Cody and the Montana border. Due to the "Open Range" signs and the hills and switchback roads, we are going pretty slow -- about 40 mph. There are a couple of kids asleep in the back and Ken and I are having a rousing discussion debating the points on whether a book is better than the movie. (My opinion is that the book is almost always better then the movie.)

Out of nowhere, we see a huge, black cow in the middle of the road about 50 feet in front of us. Ken's lighting fast reflexes. He was able to miss the bulk of the cow, but as the cow turned to look at us, her head hit the passenger side mirror knocking it clean off. Home run!

We quickly pulled over and took a few deep breaths. We couldn't figure out where that dumb cow had come from. On one side of us there was a very steep hill going up and a guardrail on the other. We turned around and the cow had disappeared. We were glad to know that she was not dead, but she must have had one heck of a headache. After a while of searching we were able to find our smashed up mirror.

The kids were pretty oblivious in the back, but we said a prayer of gratitude. The what-ifs were almost too scary to think of. No passing traffic, no cell phone service, and me 7 months preggo and smashing into a huge beast of a cow could not have had a good result. We were pretty shaken up and extremely grateful for our guardian angel that must have been traveling with us.

When we arrived at the cabin, Mark told of when his aunt and uncle's Suburban tangled with one of those black cows on that stretch of road. The cow won and their car was totaled. I guess our new van was officially broken in.

Note the cow slobber on the side of the van.

Missing mirror. :(