No, not in that way… :)

You may not want to read on if you have a vivid imagination and/or are easily grossed out…

Mark wanted to go to Crater Lake, so we set out early yesterday morning, knowing it was going to be a long day. We made it even longer by getting sidetracked for a couple of hours at Wildlife Safari, a somewhat kitschy but well worth seeing drive-through wildlife preserve.

We got to Crater Lake about 5:00 pm, and it was snowing. Mark got the dogs out and ran them around in the snow; they got soaking wet but they *loved* it. We wanted to drive around the lake before it got totally dark but it turned out that the Rim Drive was closed in both directions because of the snow. It’s only supposed to be closed in winter, according to all the maps, but apparently they have a very *flexible* definition of what that means…

After dinner at the Lodge (very pricey, probably not really worth the money compared to other great meals we’ve had, but still very worth doing for the cozy atmosphere) we set off back down the mountain. This was where things got interesting…

We came upon an accident scene, with what looked like a dead deer in the road. We stopped to help, and found out that two cars going opposite directions on a two-lane road had hit a very large elk at the same time. The elk was literally split in half.

The situation was complicated by the fact that this happened in the middle of nowhere, in a spot with no cell phone coverage from any of the cell carriers (by the time we left we had at least one phone from every one of them there, and no-one had a signal).

One of the cars was actually a heavy-duty, late-model Ford pickup truck; it crumpled in all the right places, stayed on the road, and no-one was hurt. The other car I didn’t see, but it went off into the ditch. Its occupants weren’t wearing their seatbelts, and they didn’t fare so well. The woman was seriously injured with a broken sternum or collarbone, and was taken by the first passer-by to the nearest hospital. Her adult son who was with her was, as far as anyone could tell, killed instantly.

Mark helped them drag the elk parts off the road and push the pickup off to the shoulder. Several more people stopped to help, including a tractor-trailer who used his truck to block oncoming traffic. A local couple said they knew where the cell signal picked up again, and that they would call for help as soon as they got there.

The guys in the pickup had been heading to Bend, and we told them we would give them a ride the rest of the way if the state troopers would let them go once they arrived, but when the first trooper finally arrived he said the investigation would take several more hours. So we took down phone numbers for the family members they wanted us to contact, and we left them there. Mark called everyone as soon as the phone started working again, and that was that.

I felt really bad leaving those guys on the side of the road; they were all shaking and really upset. The police had better have taken good care of them… Aaron, Mike, and Jeremy – I hope you all got home safely and are doing ok!

The biggest irony of the whole situation was that the woman told Jeremy that they were on their way home from a funeral. Sometimes the Universe really has a strange sense of humor…

Update: here’s an article about the accident from the Oregonian:

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/10/twocar_collision_leaves_one_de.html

I just added a comment to that page, but it’s not showing up at the moment. I guess they are moderating comments (maybe because I think this is the first one I have ever posted on this site).