Cars Don't Know How to Swim

This post is for documentation purposes, as most of you already know what happened.

Rachel decided she wanted to swim with her High School swim team this winter. The team practiced in the next county (about 20 minutes away). Rachel had started to drive herself to practice, when one night we get a phone call. Yeah, that kind of phone call. The one no parent likes to get.

Unfortunately, Todd nor I answered our phones and she had to call Janelle to get a hold of us. Janelle brought us the phone and this is how it went, "Dad, I'm okay but I need you to come help me. I've run off the road just around the corner from the swimming pool."

That was about the jist of the call. So, Todd grabs his towing straps and loads them into the truck. I decide to go with him just in case, he needs help getting her back onto the road.

When we pulled up to where she said she had run off the road, we saw 2 police cars, another car pulled off the road, but no Explorer. As we walked up to the bridge, we realized why we didn't see the Explorer.... It was lying sideways in the creek, just below the bridge. The other car was a team mate and his Dad who had stayed with Rachel until we got there.

She had made the left hand turn wide, had run into the grass, run across a pipe that ran parallel to the bridge and when she tried to correct the car, it tipped over into the creek. She then rolled down the driver side window and threw out her swim bag, thinking the road was just right there. It wasn't.

Her bag took a trip down the creek. It had her swim fins, hand paddles, swim goggles, swim cap, water bottle, and wallet, including her driver's license. The police tried to look for it that night but couldn't see it under the bridge or down the creek. It had been raining hard for the last few days, so we just figured it was gone.

We had to have the car towed out of the creek. I think they did more damage pulling it sideways out of the creek than Rachel did putting it into the creek.

One Sunday at church a week after the accident, one of our friends came up to me and said he had been thinking about the accident and that he thought we could find Rachel's bag in the creek. He thought it shouldn't be too far away from the bridge. So 2 days later, I decided to test his theory.

I called my friend, Stephanie, and asked if she wanted to go on an adventure with me. She brought along her knee-high wading boots and we headed out. I took Julie's rain boots so we could both get into the creek. This is what we were able to find....

1 hand paddle, 1 swim fin, the water bottle and the best find of the day: the wallet (including her driver's license, all her gift cards, and her scripture mastery cards). Too bad we could only find 1 of the hand paddles and 1 fin, but finding the wallet made the trip all worth it. And our friend was right. We started finding the stuff about 12 feet from the bridge. My friend, Stephanie found the wallet. She said that all the keychains Rachel had attached to her wallet, weighed the wallet down and that's why it didn't float away. I'm so glad we found it. I did not look forward to having to go through all the hoops to get the license replaced.

It took us a while to get Rachel back behind the wheel of a car and when it rained, she asked for one of us to drive her to practice. But I'm so glad she was okay. The Lord truly watched over and protected our family that night.