New animals!

Well I will try to make this short. Yesterday we finally got the animals I had mentioned a month earlier. This includes 2 horses, a miniture horse, 1 goat, and 2 sheep! The friend we got them from lives right off the blue ridge parkway, very beautiful! The problem was that last week it snowed 14 inches there and since then they have had the worst ice storm in 40 years! Well she was going out of town today so we took advantage of the sunny weather and gave it a try. We borrowed a friends trailer and set out on the adventure. My buddy Harrold accompanied us, and we used both of our vehicles, neither one having 4wd, what were we thinking? ! Anyhow we were almost there when the pavement became gravel (which was in the shade and they do not plow the gravel parts!) and my truck stopped. So Harrold got out to watch for traffic (country road in the middle of nowhere, what traffic?) So I backed up to get a running start. When i was gong back up the icy hill, doing good, I saw Harrold waving at me frantically to stop, but I could not. There were 3 cars waiting at the intersection so I just barreled thru them while Harrold is still waving me down! Wow, anyhow we made it to the house and loaded, all was well. Untill... oh yeah we did have to leave now, with 3000 lbs of animals and several hundred lbs. of fencing. The road leaving was paved until the very last part that crosses the blue ridge (which is not plowed, and all roads that touch the parkway can not be paved at the contact point) So we  knew about this great hill we had to cross that was solid ice, so obviously we were praying that the truck would make it, not even thinking about our van. (surely it would make it!) So i made it up and across then waited for Cory, who was driving the van pulling the animals. Well i walked back over to see her halfway up, stopped, spinning and worried. Apparently she had to stop halfway because a lady had decided to take a stroll in the road and had no thought of moving for her! well we were stuck. She put it in park, brake on and got out, and the van started to roll back! i jumped in like MacGyver and put my foot on the brake and slowly slid the van back down the icy hill to the pavement (ever slid a vehicle that has a lot of weight down an icy hill backwards?. You cant really use the brakes or you have no steering which will inevitably cause you to go the wrong way, off the mountian side!) Meanwhile a couple driving a 4wd truck that had passed us earlier came back and were waiting behind us. The road was now blocked! They asked if we needed help! Of course we did, so we downloaded the animals, put the trailer on his truck and off he went! All was well. We reloaded and came home to a nice peaceful evening of milking 2 cows! What was neat is that the couple didn't live out there. They lived about 10 miles away and this was a dead end road  they happen to turn down! In fact the fellow driving wanted to be home watching football (it was 40 outside) but his wife wanted to go for a drive to see the snow everywhere! What a God thing! The animals are doing well, nothing traumatic happened and the kids are so excited to have more horses to ride!