My mother always listened to the Voice of God in her life.

My mom (a very religious person) always listened to what she called the Voice of God. She said that he would warn her about dangers, and also give her suggestions about things that would benefit her in life. 

One of the most dramatic times that this happened was when I was a very young girl. It was Memorial Day weekend, and we had the trunk of the car packed with fresh bouquets from Mom's garden to take up to the nearby town of Bonners Ferry (where we had family buried) and put on the graves. 
Besides my mom and dad, we had our neighbors, the Bailey family; so the whole car was also packed with people. 

This was in the early Fifties, and the highways (at least in northern Idaho) were always narrow and wind-y, and partway there, you had to go through a Z-shaped underpass beneath the railroad tracks.   
You could not see anything that was coming from the other direction because of the sharp corners on both sides of the underpass. 

Just as we got to the underpass, my mom suddenly pulled clear off of the road and stopped. Before anyone could even ask her why she did that, a huge car-transport semi came through the underpass. 
He was going too fast to safely make the sharp turns through the underpass, and very nearly crashed into the concrete walls along OUR side of the road. 
If my mom had not stopped right when she did, we would literally have been crushed between the semi-truck and the concrete wall of the underpass, and probably have all died right then and there. 

When we asked her how she knew to stop when she did, she just said that God had told her to stop immediately. Thankfully, my mother was listening to Him.  

This is just one example of the times that my mother was listening when God was telling her things, but it is a time that will always stand out in my memory. 

The Worst Ever Camping Trip in My Life !

The worst-ever camping trip that I remember was done in a tiny 1963 Rambler American. If you do not remember these, they were maybe the first economy car, and back in the day when gas was only 17 cents a gallon to begin with. 

This was not actually meant to be  a camping trip.

My  husband and I had only been married a year or two, so we were both in our early twenties (probably a good thing). It was fall, and we were going hunting. 

He had the deer rifle and I had my little .22 single shot rifle for hunting grouse. 

We were on a scraggly forest service trail way back (hours) into the woods up Grouse Creek (near Sandpoint), when we came to a good-sized creek across the road.

Naturally, he was sure that we could get that little car to drive through the creek, and somehow, after several tries, we actually made it across, and on up the hill on the other side. 

Not so easy that evening when we came back down again, and were tired and heading home. 

Of course, the poor little Rambler  got stuck, totally bogged down, in the middle of Grouse Creek.  We tried to jack it up and push it off of the jack to get it far enough out to drive. 

That didn't work

Next, we tried using a large dead branch that was laying on the ground and using that as a fulcrum to push the car ahead. 

That didn't work either. 

After a couple hours of this, we were soaked to the skin, cold, and tired.  And a long, long ways from civilization of any kind. 

We made a small campfire, ate whatever food we had left, dried the clothes as best as we could, and slept in the car over night.  The back seat would lay down flat, so it actually made a fairly good bed to sleep on, at least for short people like me. Not so good for him. 

The next morning, we were seriously starving; but had renewed our energy, and somehow (with much desperate praying on my part), we got that little car pushed far enough out of the creek that he could drive it out of the other side. 

Getting back home and taking a hot shower was such a wonderful thing ! However, I am not sure if we did that before or after we had something to eat. 

And neither one of us brought up the idea of camping for a long time after that...

Our little Rambler looked similar to this, but it was white.