About 2 hours after I posted the week 7 recap, we got a call from the mechanic telling us we could pick up Max. Hallelujah! We were finally able to leave Billings around 3:30 that afternoon, after finding a very convenient sewage dump at the Cabellas right up the street. I had no idea they were such a full service store but it was perfect timing as we desperately needed to dump. We made it to Cardwell, MT that evening and were back on the road bright and early the next morning so we could cross the Rocky Mountains of northern Montana/Idaho when it was relatively early and not too hot. That was an adventure, only because Paul and I were so worried the car wouldn't make it. I think we both held our breaths the entire 4 or so hours it took to climb those darn mountains. On the way down we pulled over for lunch and Paul discovered a crack in one of the wheels so he changed yet another tire. We were down to 2 flat/broken spares then. Thankfully we were able to make it to my brother's house just north of Spokane, WA with no more troubles. Jay and his fiance Tamara bought a nice house on 5 acres with this huge pole building on the property which we thought it would be fun to park in. It was until about midnight when I woke up abruptly and freaked out. It was completely dark and I couldn't get my bearings. I felt like I was in a black box with the walls closing in on me. I have never been claustrophobic before but I couldn't get myself to settle down. I had to get out of the trailer just to breathe. Even then, it was very dark outside since Jay lives no where near a city. I just wanted light! I went back in the trailer and slept with my light on and I still had to concentrate on reliving the trip in order to take my mind off of feeling so closed in. It was freaky and I hope I never experience anything like that again. What a nightmare. But Jay's place was cool, and the kids had lots of room to run and explore, and they fed the friendly deer some bread. We are excited for Uncle Jay's wedding on the 17th!
Aug 1st we visited for a while while Paul got a spare repaired in town, just in case. We figured it would take us two days to get home from there since we didn't move very fast on the road, but once we got to Hermiston, OR we thought we might be able to make it home that day. Paul said it would all depend on how hot it was and the winds in the gorge because head winds were a killer to our huge caravan. I don't know who we thought we were fooling. Of course we weren't going to stop just a couple hours from home! Luckily the weather wasn't too hot but I have never experienced such awful wind in the Columbia River Gorge before. We had horrible head winds trying their darnedest to push us off into the river I swear. A couple times a big gust would hit the long, broad side of us and we would skid just a bit. I was cursing the vacation gods at this point. All we wanted to to do was get home. Thankfully my awesome driver of a husband muscled us through and it calmed down in Hood River. Smooth sailing from there and we made it home around 9pm. I will admit it was nice to be safely home, but I really did not want the vacation to end. I don't know that I could live indefinitely on the road, but I could have gone a couple more weeks for sure. Other than the stress of knowing your life and safety revolves around a stupid machine and is barely in your control, life on the road was kind of simple once we got the routine down. Mason, Bree, and I would have been good continuing on I think but all good things must come to an end I guess.
So just a few final stats from the trip. We saw 36 states in 55 days and put a total of 11,197 miles on Max. At first I was thinking Max was a lemon, but holy cow. He was pushed to the limit every day for 2 months hauling us and the trailer around for at least 6-8 hours a day. I would probably give out a time or two also. It would have been wonderful to have had no problems what-so-ever but that is so unrealistic. I am just grateful that when we did have troubles we were never in danger, and we never actually blew a tire while we were driving. We were blessed by many wonderful people who went above and beyond their job descriptions, and we had some very timely cloud banks roll in as we were stuck on the side of the road which dropped the temps to manageable. I could whine and complain about it (and I have) but I am choosing to acknowledge all the good that surrounded the bad. I would recommend a road trip like this to everyone! What an amazing experience it was for the entire family. It makes our country seem so small now that we have seen so much of it. I have been asked what my favorite part was and I honestly can't say one thing stood out more than the rest. I loved the diverse landscapes, the cities, the small towns, the regional agriculture (sugar cane in Louisiana, tobacco in North Carolina, etc) the animals, of course the Braves game was awesome, and I realized we saw quite a few places memorializing death. Places like Carthage jail, Gettysburg, Ford's theater, Little Bighorn. They were all pretty moving places to visit. I liked visiting the cities but I am much more comfortable in places like South Dakota where there is open road and its not quite as densely populated. It was such a long trip that its hard to believe Zion and Grand Canyon were actually part of this trip and not one we took last summer. I'm glad I kept up with these posts just because I have a hard time remembering everything we actually did so its nice to have a travel log. Now that this trip we have been planing for a few years is over I will start planning "Trip B." There were so many things we missed this time that its a must to do it again and see the not quite as famous stuff. I will have to do some convincing though.
We collected quite a list of animals we saw around the country. This is a horned toad we found in our campground outside of Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. We also saw lizards, bats, roadrunners, tarantulas, a pink snake, jack rabbits, ringtails, wild turkeys, deer, dung beetles, Texas longhorns, alligators, turtles, armadillos, dragon flies, fireflies, cicadas, prairie dogs, long horn sheep, coyote, pronghorns, mountain goats, buffalo, wild burros, and bald eagles. That would be quite a zoo if we put them all together.
I know I will never forget this trip and Bree will probably never remember it, but I hope everyone in between will have great lasting memories, or at least impressions, of the summer we toured this amazing country of ours and lived to tell the tale.
No comments:
Post a Comment