Things don't always look better in the morning.

Corey drove to Hilton Head right after work yesterday. It was not surprising, really. I told him not to make the long trip - we were safe and there wasn't anything he could do, but honestly, it was really great to hug him.

He and I drove up to the site of mile marker 14 this morning to see of there was anything worth retrieving. I did not have high hopes, but Corey would not be deterred. So, the boys stayed with Nana & PopPops and off we went.

While the dark of night was so disorienting and the events beyond terrifying, seeing the aftermath in broad daylight was . . . truly jarring. It was a bucket of ice water to the face. It forced a hazy horror into clarity and made us realize the full force of how very lucky we actually were. The following pictures don't do it justice.

You can see our last set of swerving tracks in the grass before we hit the guard rail, which we apparently hit dead on, not glancing it into its side. (I had honestly not realized this.) All the damage was toward the rear right of the van, as you could see from the previous post's picture. This should give you a clear idea of the extreme angle we came at it, and why I thought we were going to roll:


Here is the guard rail up close. We found shards of the dark van window glass shattered for over twenty feet in every direction. Two tension rods were snapped. You can see one on the ground, it was thicker than my thumb:


Here is the damage at another angle. Notice the short stretch of guard rail ending with a rectangular black and yellow caution sign and a steep drop off:


And here is the same caution sign up close, and the small ravine we narrowly avoided: