On Saturday morning we awoke early at Johnson Lake and started the big packing-up process, happy to know that we'd have just one more day of driving before we'd be able to have a bit of rest in Colorado, get the baby to stretch his legs, and re-up on the default world. Although our week-long stop with my family in Louisville is meant to be primarily restful, there is still a lot of stuff on our list to do. Russell needs to sign up for courses, we needed to do some banking, I need to find a used cell phone, Russell needs to get his phone fixed, etc. etc. So we need to reorganize and line up our ducks, so to speak, but we also knew we had just six hours to go before we'd be in a place with a real bed, AC, and plenty of amenities! No long car rides for a whole week! Yay! We told Orion all about how we'd be at Noni's house (my mom) that night and he'd get a good long break from the car seat...
Alas, but we were mistaken! On the Des Moines-to-Nebraska leg we started having some trouble with the car and the 'check engine' light came on, but we sort of thought it was related to over-stressing the cruise control for miles upon miles with the loaded car in the heat. The rising altitude was also a factor on my mind... A little hesitation in the engine, just a bit of a stutter... Hmm... It seemed to get better, though, and once we were stopped at the lake we sort of let is slip our minds. When we got back on the road in Nebraska, the 'check engine' light had gone off - and we figured we were in the clear!
We even left slightly unprepared: the cooler needed ice, the baby was fed but we'd had a light-to-nonexistent breakfast, and we had a limited amount of water. We weren't in dire straits or anything, but we certainly weren't totally prepared for the day ahead. After only a couple hours into the drive, the engine started stuttering badly and we were losing acceleration. We pulled over on the side of the road and called AAA. Thank goodness for them - that's a purchase that I'm constantly glad to have made!
However, the place where we stopped wasn't ideal. We were in the middle of nowhere Nebraska, and it was hot. The grass on the roadside was high and full of bugs like spiders and biting flies. It's not safe to sit in the car, so I sat under an overpass (for the shade) until I just couldn't handle the bug factor. We decided to try to get to the next exit and get off to wait for the tow truck there. Thank goodness the Subaru, my good sweet zippy girl, cooperated and got us off the highway to a Shell station. With Orion asleep in his carseat, we posted up on the porch of a restaurant that had yet to open for the day's business to wait. I scooted in to the convenience store and got us ice cream sandwiches and water, and when I came out the tow guy had already arrived.
His name was Rob and he was really nice - I appreciated that immensely, because it can be pretty luck-of-the-draw for crazy mechanic guys in the middle of the country. He towed us about 40 miles toward Colorado, to the shop he worked for: Steve's Towing and Recovery. The place is right on the Nebraska/Colorado border, a garage adjacent to the owner's house, with the usual complement of broken down, used, or half-fixed cars spread about the place. The area was beautiful - good thing, too, because we were there for a good four hours, maybe more.
Rob did a diagnostic on the car, then hooked some readers to the fuel line and took her out on the road. Bad news: we needed a new fuel pump. They had the power to fix it, but not the part - and the part wouldn't arrive till Tuesday. Suddenly we were looking at a three-night stay in a hotel in nowhere, Nebraska.
Fortunately the house had wi-fi, so we got our computers out and started scrambling for a fix to our problem. Having the car towed to Louisville would have cost roughly $600, so that was out. We then figured we could rent a car, get to Louisville, and then go back for the Subaru once it was fixed. However, a recent hailstorm had damaged enough cars in the area that all the rental cars were booked. The only hotel in the nearest town, Julesburg, CO, was a run-down motel. There was one restaurant nearby, a Subway. It was starting to look like 4 days of hell, stuck in a town primarily populated with liquor stores, with no car, one phone that only sort of worked, and a dwindling food supply. Bummer.
Thank goodness we were only about 2.5 hours out from our destination at my mom's place in Louisville. We threw ourselves on their mercy, and DB was kind enough to make the drive out to our place of stranded ennui to pick us up. We waited for hours in the yard near the shop, getting more testy and burned out as the night went on. As the sun went down a storm moved in on the horizon, and I got some amazing photos. The temperature cooled a lot in the evening, too, and that helped our state of being quite a bit.
The piece of country where the shop was located was intensely beautiful. The house was on a hill, surrounded by wheat fields and wild grasslands. The sun setting over the wheat fields was so intensely beautiful that it was almost worth the car trouble. There were jackrabbits and mourning doves all over the place on the property, and I really enjoyed sitting with the sweet little bunnies that came out to investigate us. Fortunately we did have sandwich fixings and some drinks, and the folks there were nice - though they didn't invite us in. We had access to their patio, though, so we sat out there and watched an episode of Game of Thrones.
A little while after 8 PM, DB and my mom arrived, a bit harried after driving through the storms that we could see a few miles off. We all stood and watched the amazing sky show happening across the horizons, with the burning colors of the sunset peeking out below the indigo and gray of the storms. Absolutely stunning!
Finally we arrived in Louisville, sans-Subaru and in need of some serious showers and rest. The car will be available on Tuesday, and we're borrowing a car to go pick her up. We're even trying to find a babysitter for Orion so that he is spared the extra day of driving.
Today we just kind of lazed around... But at least I caught up on blog posts! There's a few more stories I want to relate from the first leg of our drive in West Virginia - keep an eye out for those, coming soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment