Dad Of Rescued Family Won’t Take ‘Church Rig’ Next Time
According to WRAL News, next time Jason McAlister takes his wife and kids for a drive in the rugged country at the base of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, he says, it won’t be in the “family church rig.” On Tuesday, a gold 2008 Chevrolet Uplander van, got stuck southwest of Seattle on a Mason County logging road, just a few hours before Jason and Melissa McAlister were supposed to be back home to meet their older children at the bus stop after school.
Instead, the couple ended up spending two nights in the woods with their baby and toddler as the sheriff’s deputies drove all over looking for them. Hunters found them Thursday morning as they walked toward civilization. Jason McAlister, 33, told television news crews afterward “Everybody’s good. God’s great. Happy to be alive.”
At about 1 p.m. Tuesday the family started walking back toward the main road, but stopped as darkness fell. He made a shelter along the side of the road that protected them from the wind as temperatures dropped into the 30s.
Early on Wednesday, the family began trekking back to the van, reaching it at 8 a.m. They turned on the heater, tried to dry out their clothes, put on some DVDs and listened to the radio, where they learned authorities were looking for them.
After spending Wednesday night in the van, they began walking out again on Thursday morning, tearing sheets of paper from a spiral notebook the older kids, ages 5 and 7, had left in the van and leaving them on the ground in wide spots of the road where they might be seen by helicopter crews.
That’s when the hunters found them, Jason McAlister said. McAlister formerly served as a volunteer firefighter for Cowlitz County, where he also worked search-and-rescue, and he said he was grateful for the efforts of everyone who had been looking for his family.
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