I figured since I've been such a sucky blogger lately, I could update on our trip! This will be done in several parts though because I'm lazy like that. This will be the longest one probably!
On the 11th of this month, we packed up the Wrangler and a borrowed pop-up and headed off to Red River, NM! As a kid, my family went here quite a bit in the summers and it is also the place where my deep fear of bears began. Needless to say I was a bundle of nerves the entire time since we were staying in the same campground we did when the bear came in years ago. Yikes! I felt a little better being in the pop-up though.
Anyway, the beginning of the trip was actually quite eventful...
We were caravanning with my parents (thank goodness!!) and didn't get off until almost 7:00 PM on that Thursday night since Josh and I worked all day, and stopped in Childress because we were just tired. When we pulled in that night, we noticed the Jeep's radiator was sputtering and spewing. The temperature gauge showed cool though so we didn't worry about it.
The next day we got on the road and made it to Amarillo. That's when everything went downhill!
To make a long story short, we got to Amarillo around 11:15-11:30ish AM and we finally left Amarillo at around 11:30 PM. The first issue was the radiator. We ended up having to replace the entire radiator and thermostat thingy (technical, I know) while sitting in the Pilot station on the loop around Amarillo. The boys worked while my mom and I hung out in the shade.
Once they got that fixed, we left the Pilot station and got about a 1/4 of a mile before we overheated again. Since we just replaced the radiator, we had no idea what it could be. I still don't know everything (because contrary to popular belief, car repair isn't my speciality!) but I know the ended up replacing the fan clutch and basically taking apart the entire cooling system. The fan thingy was a pain because it wouldn't disconnect from the clutch part. Don't ask me what that means in regards to how it all works. Then, once it was apart and the new stuff was put on, something kept banging.
During all of this, a storm was swirling around us.
We were very blessed though to breakdown where we did. Much of the drive to Red River is open nothingness so the fact that this all happened in Amarillo is awesome. Much more, we broke down just down the street from a big truck stop. And there were O'Reilly's shops within 2 miles. Hallelujah! There were also other interesting thing that happened... first, a guy named Jesus pulled over (yeah, really his name) and helped out. He also had some tools in his car that the boys apparently needed. Then some random lady stopped and gave us an iced drink from McDonalds (so sweet of her!) She said something like "i don't know why I got two, but I did!".
Later, Josh and I took my parents car (praise the LORD they were with us) and went to O'Reillys to get the clutch separated from the fan. The folks there were SO nice and helpful. When they couldn't get it fixed, the manager called some random car repair guy he knew who came up after hours and worked on it. Finally he gave up and told us to follow him to his house and he would burn it off basically. So we did. And he did. And then when we asked him how much we owed him (in between our millions of thanks) he said "nothing.. just have a good vacation!". SO AWESOME! We'd already spent several hundred unexpected bucks on other parts so this was a blessing. It was probably at least $75-100 worth of labor this guy did!
All that to say, we are blessed and so grateful to the Lord for taking care of us. There were big storms all around and they never hit where we were, but provided quite the lightning show.
Since we'd been stuck there all day, we just wanted to get OUT of Amarillo so we drove for a little while and stopped in Dalhart. OMGosh... that place stinks. Literally. There are feed lots there and I seriously thought I was going to gag it smelled so bad. Not like cow poop, but more like maggot filled rotting carcasses. It was that bad.
Enough talking. Here's some pics from our first day of vacation.
Mother fanning the boys as they worked
Below is a picture of when Jesus was helping!
Mi madre and I watched the lightning storm swirl around us. I did a few timed exposures just for kicks.
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