Rachel Marks and her husband, Shawn, were fine until the water stopped running.
From Du Quoin, both of them know what winter looks like. And when the massive storm hit San Antonio, Texas on Sunday, they just rolled with it.
Rachel, the 2019 Mrs. Illinois and who revived the Miss Du Quoin pageant in 2020, was in San Antonio last week to compete in the United States of America's Mrs. Pageant. They flew out of St. Louis on Feb. 11 and had a great time at the pageant -- where Rachel finished as a finalist.
When the storm hit Sunday, and even when Southwest Airlines canceled their flight Monday morning, it was merely an inconvenience. Rachel and Shawn arranged to stay in their hotel another night -- with all the other pageant contestants and staff, since nobody was getting out -- and extended their rental car another day. They had a nice dinner with friends.
By Monday night however, the hotel had no water, as water pipes were freezing all over Texas. The food was running out in the hotel. Exhausted hotel personnel, many of whom hadn't left their posts, were doing what they could.
"The hotel was feeding everybody with whatever food they had," Rachel said. No other restaurants in the area were open, as trucks with deliveries could not navigate the icy roads.
Rachel and Shawn decided to pack up Tuesday and head for Austin, where they had booked another flight to St. Louis on Wednesday. So they waved goodbye to their friends, drove the 80 miles and got a room in a hotel across from the airport. They returned the rental car, as the price for the extra day's rental had been jacked up and that one extra day literally doubled their bill.
The Austin hotel, happily, had water and heat. Their problem now was food. The hotel restaurant had closed, having sold every last morsel. No restaurants in the area were open. Not even gas stations were open. The hotel had no vending machines or mini bars.
Rachel and Shawn ransacked their bags.
"We had four protein bars," Rachel said. She insists that a lot of people had it much worse. "We were comfortable," she says, "we were just hungry."
Meanwhile, back in San Antonio, their pageant friends were in a nightmare. With no running water since Sunday, the women were taking their room's ice buckets down to San Antonio's famed Riverwalk, and bringing river water back upstairs to flush their toilets.
On Wednesday morning, Shawn and Rachel checked out and sat with their bags in the hotel lobby, waiting until it was time to go to the Austin Airport. They flight was delayed four times and then canceled.
Shawn walked to the airport rent-a-car, but they weren't renting cars to anyone who was going to drive it outside of the great Austin area. They may have been remembering Sept. 11, 2001, when, with all the flights grounded, rental cars were driven all over the country, and it took more than a year for all the cars to return to their home terminal.
Whatever the reason, they were stuck. Then, as a last resort they called a local U-Haul dealer and ... success!
Shawn got behind the wheel of the big, empty box truck, and they started driving north, toward Lambert Field in St. Louis and their car. At first, the roads were so treacherous they only got 90 miles in four hours.
By Waco, Texas, however, the roads and traffic had both improved. The duo stopped in Norman, Oklahoma for the night.
"We got there about 2 a.m. and left about 9 a.m. this morning," Rachel said Thursday. "We're going to drive straight through. I haven't seen my kids since last Thursday."
Despite the ordeal, Rachel says it could have been a lot worse.
"I feel we were super lucky," she said. "I don't feel like we were really in danger."
"It was supposed to be this wonderful romantic weekend and it wound up completely insane. But it could have been so much worse.
"I hope they get some help soon."
