Moonshine & Wanderlust

There is this thing called “mudding” in the South – I’m not exactly sure what it is, honestly. I think it’s when people who have “bad ass” 4 wheel drives get out and drive around in the mud. Maybe? Someone enlighten me if I am missing it. What happens when you get a girl in a car that is not made for the winter elements and stick her in some mud? Some crazy things happen. I’m not sure where to start, but the beginning is never a bad idea.

I set out yesterday morning to visit my friend who lives out in what I like to call the “boonies.” The roads were clear so I wasn’t particularly worried. I’m a “I can do it myself” stubborn fool to the core, so even if they weren’t clear I wasn’t going to let anyone tell me any different. I shot my car straight up her snow covered gravel driveway with ease. Okay, maybe some determined and chugging ease, but I got up there. I convince my friend to go with me to take some pictures. As I backed my car up into a cutout in her driveway so I can go back down the “proper way”, I incurred a slight problem. My car will not drive forward – my back wheels had suctioned to the mud tighter than two fifteen year olds making out in the back of a van.

In typical white girl fashion, our minds start cataloging through all of our very helpful Pinterest pins that are supposed to help us in times like these.

“Kitty litter! But, I don’t have a cat.”

“So, the kitty litter thing isn’t gonna work.”

“Maybe the neighbors have kitty litter…”

We scrapped the litter idea. You must understand my friend, D, is a real go getter. So, she runs back up to her house and brings out four wooden shelves she was going to hang up in her house. I felt awful, but she insisted they were free and getting my car out of the mud was more important.

Anytime I tried to advance the car, I just slid further down the hill (sideways, mind you – all I could envision was my car landing on its top at the bottom of her driveway.) We pushed and pushed but the car was not budging. In a last ditch effort, we sheepishly walked over to the neighbor’s house. Okay, I sheepishly walked – D stomped with the fervor of a one woman army. She banged on the door and what followed was the piercing bark of several dogs.

“Hush!” came a woman’s voice from inside. More barking. “I said shut up!”

I dug my foot around in the stack of snow covering the porch. “Have you ever talked to these people before?”

“Nope.”

“Great.”

The woman’s voice came from around the corner, “Yeah! What do you need?”

We walked back down the porch around the side of the house. Why do some women not believe in wearing undergarments? I’ll never know.

We explained our situation and the woman muttered something and disappeared back inside of the house. D and I walked back to my car. I sat inside, staring… I was contemplating calling my AAA service or walking to the store to buy that damn kitty litter. More minutes passed and finally an older man walked over to us and gave my car a once over. He was a man of little words. Getting behind my car, he and D gave it a shove and I gassed that sucker, er I mean my precious baby, until her wheels popped right up out of the mud and sent me effortlessly sliding down the hill to a stop.

This is what you call a look of triumph:

Okay, I was going to post a picture of our thumbs up but honestly, we looked scary as hell after that whole ordeal so I will just say we were extremely excited to be free and on our way.

After the mud situation, we met our friend, K, for coffee. Of course, I still wanted to go take some snow pictures so we set out to find unmolested snow as the sun began to set. We had a good snowball fight and I made them be my models for the afternoon. Check out that adventure here.

After our impromptu snow pictures, we were on our way… except, we didn’t anticipate what would happen next. I’m surprised my car is still in one piece after the events of yesterday. Pt. 2 coming soon!