It was Black Friday. We went to Tysons mall early that morning to do our Christmas shopping. We? I had traveled to Maryland to be with my husband's family for their annual Thanksgiving celebration. His mother, father, all his brothers and sisters and their children were there, including our children. He was the only one absent. Supposedly he had to work this Thanksgiving but would join us Thursday night, then he fell asleep after work and would join us Friday morning before going to the mall. Leaving the mall around five, he was a no-show, so I made a conscious decision to go home once we got to my sister-in-law's house. I packed our things, left my two oldest girls, and got on the highway heading home. I stopped to get gas thirty to forty miles down the road. My sons, five and ten, were all buckled up; I had my bedroom shoes on. Taking a left out of the service station, I was heading home. One mile, two miles, this road was now very narrow, icy, and snow had accumulated from the weather earlier that day. Leveling off at an elevation of 4,200 feet, we started down this mountain. Two hundred feet we stared in disbelief at a twenty-five-foot white gate stretched across the snow-covered road.