On Saturday, as we were playing around in town, I decided to take the kids south of Anchorage for a bit of a drive.  I had been wanting to go down there, as it has been years since I had ventured that direction.  I checked the gas, and since we had half a tank, I didn't fill up before leaving town.  We meandered down the Seward highway, stopping at pull-outs to view the ocean.  We didn't stop at Bird Point, as I was being thrifty, and didn't want to pay the $5 parking fee to satisfy our curiosity as to why you had to pay to park there, so on to Girdwood we went.

I drove around Girdwood for a little while, trying to find the chalet that dh and I had spent our first wedded weekend together, and not finding it, we started to leave the little village of Girdwood.  Just as we were pulling out of the neighborhood where I thought the chalet had been, my gas light came on.  That's strange, I thought.  I didn't think I had driven the van that much!  Oh, well, I guess I will put a little gas in at the turn-off.

I stopped and put just $5 of gas into the van, taking about 5 minutes to do so, and off we headed back to Anchorage.  I figured we would have a couple of hours to unwind where we were staying before we needed to leave for the airport to pick up dh.

As we passed Bird Point, I noticed that there was a rescue truck there.  Hmm, I thought, I am glad we didn't stop.

We got about halfway back to town, when we came to a dead standstill.  Traffic was completely stopped.  Just up ahead, there had been a head-on collision.  One woman was dead and one man was air-lifted to the hospital.  There was debris all over the road.

I fully believe that if I hadn't stopped to get gas, we would have been right in the middle of that accident.  Even if that wasn't the accident that God was protecting me from, I wouldn't have had enough gas to make it back to Anchorage since we sat for over 2.5 hours, waiting for the troopers to clean up the mess.

Also, while we were sitting in traffic, several rescue vehicles, including a diver rescue team, passed us, on the way back toward Bird Point.  Who knows what we might have encountered there.

Praise God for his tender mercies to my family.  Praise God that we are all healthy and happy.  Praise God for His Holy Spirit's promptings.