Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Weekend Trip Part 2: Escalante

My grandma's funeral was in Escalante Friday morning. There was a lot of family there to say their last goodbyes.

There were many nice things said at the funeral and I even learned some things about my grandma. Growing up, I would often visit my grandparents farm with my dad. But while we were there, I was usually following my dad around, so I really didn't get to know my grandma very well. But I know that she was an amazing woman and possessed so many admirable qualities.

When we went up to the cemetery after the funeral, they allowed those who wished to say some words into the microphone and share memories. Many people told stories of my grandma and remembered all of the wonderful things about her. It was really nice and I liked hearing everyone's memories of her.

A big lunch was provided for the family, then we went to the farm one last time. There were so many people out there, and Will was extremely tired and fussy so we didn't stay long. We still had a 3 hour drive to the lake, and I was hoping that he would sleep for a good portion of the way.

About 15-20 minutes outside of Escalante, our car started making ticking noises. Then we noticed a good trail of smoke following behind us. We pulled over on the side of the road and got out to see what was going on. As I got out of the car, I was engulfed in smoke. Our engine was smoking way bad. Luckily, we were the first to leave, so I knew that my family would be shortly behind us.

My sister found us first. Her husband is a mechanic so he began to look over our car. When we tried to start it, it would shake and rattle the entire engine, then die. Definitely not looking good.

Slowly, the rest of my family started showing up. My dad, who is also a mechanic stopped to take a look. It must have been quite the scene because we had about 5-6 cars pulled off of the road trying to help us out.

As they continued to look at it, it was quickly becoming apparent that our car was toast. And not just needs a small fix toast, I mean completely toast. Lance and I were pretty stressed and freaking out about this point.

And look what we found right outside my door:

Looks like we weren't the first ones to break down in that spot!

Things continued to get worse. Suddenly something (maybe oil?) was spewing from the front of the car and liquid was draining everywhere.

In the end, we decided to tow the car to Panguitch and decide what to do from there. When we got there, the shop said it would be about $1200 minimum to fix, plus it would take them a month! Definitely wasn't going to do that. By this point, everyone was anxious to get to the lake. Not having many options, we left our car in Panguitch, piled all of our stuff into another car, and made our way to the lake. My brother-in-law has family in Panguitch so we were able to leave the car at their place until we decide what to do with it.

Needless to say, it put a real damper on our vacation. It was bad enough that the car died, but to have it happen right after putting so much money into it was just frustrating. Besides the $130 we'd put into the the day before, we just registered it a few weeks before, plus we had another $100 repair about a month ago.

And for some reason, the day before we left, I started looking online for a car to buy. I just felt like we would need to buy a new car within the next year. Little did I know that it would be much sooner.

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