Slippery roads and driving experience

goldenboy

goldenboy

Well-known member
Guys, it looks like we might get some weather in the midwest sometime this weekend. I want to tell you a little story about my trip home from North Dakota on Sunday. It was a beautiful morning the sun was trying to burn off the fog and when we hit the Minnesota border the hoar frost was incredible! We were remarking about how beautiful it was when I started to notice some car tracks in the ditch that were fresh and had cleared some of the frost off of the grass. I told my buddy who was driving to be careful it might be slippery. He touched the brakes and the truck broke loose! We corrected it and slowed down considerably. Within a minute we had a car barrelling down on us and we were afraid he would loose control and run into the back end of our truck. Just then we lost traction sending the truck sideways on the interstate. My buddy corrected the slide but now we were going straight into the ditch. What a ride that was. We missed one of those road edge metal markers and hit the bottom of the ditch at about 65 miles an hour. The ditch was all frozen cattails and we drove through about 200 yards of cattails till we slowed enough to turn on the 4 wheel drive and climb back out of the ditch and back onto the freeway. No damage to the truck and we continued the rest of the way home without incident.

Guys it can end in an instant for us, our dogs, our hunting partners, our family! Please be careful in December as we travel to chase our passions.

By the way I didn't have time to load the gun and do a little ditch hunting when we were in the cattails! Nothing flushed maybe we were going to fast?!?!
 
Ditch driving/hunting at 65mph, that is awesome! SO how fast was he driving before he "slowed down considerably"?
 
Whew! One January 31st I was driving from walk-in to walk-in in Smith Co. after an ice storm. The country roads had an inch of solid ice. No kidding, it was smooth and thick enough to ice skate on with not a pebble sticking out anywhere. I kept sliding past corners where I wanted to turn. I came upon a tonnie pulling a trailer with an old '50s Farmall with a hay fork on it, all of which was wedged at an angle between the cut banks on a little hill. They lost traction going up the hill, started sliding backward, and wedged the rig to stop it from going backward out of control. The tractor had fallen partially off the trailer and broke off a front wheel at the spindle. Quite a mess. The older gentleman and I went looking for a tractor to borrow but had no luck. When we got back his hand had driven the tractor to the bottom of the hill by using the hay fork to lift up the front end, using it like a sled, and steering with the rear brakes. We then got the tonnie unwedged by shoveling some gravel under its tires. Me, I got skunked after missing my last shot of the season later that day. As cynics say, no good deed goes unpunished. ;)
 
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My buddy texted me today and said he was cleaning out his airbox and his air cleaner, they were full of cattail fuzz! Yes we did slow down considerably considering we were just in ND where the speed limit is 75 and everyone drives 84 mph! We were probably traveling close to 80 mph when we decided to slow down. AFter the ditch run we slowed to about 45 mph for the next hour. That is a killer when you are trying to get home.
 
BritChaser said:
Whew! One January 31st I was driving from walk-in to walk-in in Smith Co. after an ice storm. The country roads had an inch of solid ice. No kidding, it was smooth and thick enough to ice skate on with not a pebble sticking out anywhere. I kept sliding past corners where I wanted to turn. I came upon a tonnie pulling a trailer with an old '50s Farmall with a hay fork on it, all of which was wedged at an angle between the cut banks on a little hill. They lost traction going up the hill, started sliding backward, and wedged the rig to stop it from going backward out of control. The tractor had fallen partially off the trailer and broke off a front wheel at the spindle. Quite a mess. The older gentleman and I went looking for a tractor to borrow but had no luck. When we got back his hand had driven the tractor to the bottom of the hill by using the hay fork to lift up the front end, using it like a sled, and steering with the rear brakes. We then got the tonnie unwedged by shoveling some gravel under its tires. Me, I got skunked after missing my last shot of the season later that day. As cynics say, no good deed goes unpunished. ;)
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I know all about Smith Co roads. Not so much in winter but in the spring. I was turkey hunting near Phillipsburg awhile back and turned off the tar to look over this hill just to get a glimpse at some public land to see if it was worth the mile walk down the road (I knew about not driving on your gumbo roads after a rain). I got about 10 yards off the tar, my car slid off the road and into the side of the dirt curb (the only thing that saved me from sliding into a wheat field was the way that road was dug into the dirt). Sunk down to my frame. Blew a seal on my engine trying to get unstuck and over heated the thing. Only saving grace was some guy in an old pickup come by and pulled me back into the tar so I could limp back to town.
 
Munster927 said:
I know all about Smith Co roads. Not so much in winter but in the spring. I was turkey hunting near Phillipsburg awhile back and turned off the tar to look over this hill just to get a glimpse at some public land to see if it was worth the mile walk down the road (I knew about not driving on your gumbo roads after a rain). I got about 10 yards off the tar, my car slid off the road and into the side of the dirt curb (the only thing that saved me from sliding into a wheat field was the way that road was dug into the dirt). Sunk down to my frame. Blew a seal on my engine trying to get unstuck and over heated the thing. Only saving grace was some guy in an old pickup come by and pulled me back into the tar so I could limp back to town.
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Kind of thing that takes the fun out of turkey hunting.
 
Joel...Holy Shiite! 200 yards of cattails! That would have been a sight to see!!! The fuzz was flying. Glad you are unscathed!
 
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