The Long Way Home

Tuesday was the day I had been dreading. 2 1/2 hours in the truck with Gary, Mom & Summer, then another 8 1/2 hours in the truck with Rachel, the kids, and Summer. Not that I dread any of the people, but the hours are hard.

12:00 PM we left Idaho Falls and headed to Twin Falls. It wasn't really a bad trip and Summer napped for an hour or so. We stopped in Twin Falls, had lunch at a sandwich shop, met up with Rachel, transferred the suitcases and car seat to her car and at 3:30 PM we headed out for Las Vegas.

About an hour into our trip South the engine got hot and check gage light came on. We pulled over, Rachel opened the hood to her truck and smoke poured out. I got out and together we stared at her engine with absolutely no thoughts of what we should do in our head. We stood there for at least a minute with blank stares on our faces. Each of us went huh at least twice. Luckily some nice guy pulled over and looked and decided the radiator was low. He put water in and after calling our dads, and me calling my husband, we decided it was safe to continue hoping the problem was fixed. An hour or so later we encountered the same issue so we pulled over again and added water. Another nice older man pulled over to assist and said we should be ok if we continued to add water. We contemplated heading all the way to Las Vegas but it was getting late and dark and impending rain was on the horizon so we figured it would be best to stop in Ely Nevada for the night.

Ely has a population of about 4000 people. Plenty of hotels though, we found a nice room at the Hotel Nevada, a historic hotel/casino built in 1929. The casino was nasty, the room was actually pretty nice. Our two rooms has three twin size beds and a queen bed. I shared a twin with Summer because I needed her next to the wall, just in case she should fall out. Rachel shared the queen with both kids. You can only imagine how comfy we slept.

Oh - back up, when we arrived at the hotel it was dark and pouring rain. We had to get three kids out of the car, get our luggage, move the extra luggage we did not need from the back of the truck into the truck so we could lock it for the night. I was wet, Rachel had to move the car after we moved and unloaded so she looked like a drowned rat. We finally made it into the room pretty late, like around 9:00 PM and still had not eaten dinner. The hotel had a restaurant inside so we ordered a pizza and managed to eat some, you could tell everyone was exhausted.

Upon waking before the 7:00 AM alarm, we packed and headed to the repair place around 8:00 AM. Both Rachel and I managed to leave our wet clothes hanging in the closet of the hotel, thankfully they said they would mail them to us. The car repair place temporarily fixed the car, while waiting we had breakfast, and we were able to continue the last 4 hours. We left Ely around 10:30 AM, only had to stop once to add water to the radiator, and made it home around 3:30 PM. It took an extra hour because we had several delays due to road construction, one bathroom/lunch break and that water stop.

Overall it wasn't that bad, it was actually quite an adventure, car problems, thunderstorms, neat old hotels that had signs saying the water temperature would fluctuate, squeaky bathroom doors, decent food, major humidity, cool and hot weather, getting drenched, and .99 cent margaritas that were good but too late and tired to enjoy.

We enjoyed a cool ride home until we were about 2 hours away from Las Vegas, that is when the temperatures picked up. We didn't want to use the air conditioner on the ride just in case, you can imagine how windy part of the trip was, and how hot we were. Summer broke about an hour outside of Las Vegas, she said she was done. "I am all done" she cried, "done with what?" I asked, "the wind" she said. "Honey we have to keep the windows rolled down because it is too hot to roll them up" I told her. She wasn't upset for long, she is quite tolerant of the heat actually.

We met Kris and Cliff (daddy & papa) and moved over the luggage and car seat. Summer and Kris if he cried when he saw her, she was extremely happy to be home, to be sitting in air conditioning. When we got home the bottled up energy released and Summer had a blast playing and dancing and hugging. Cliff/Papa wanted to take us to dinner at Joe's crab shack, Summer and I managed to stay awake through dinner.

All in all it was a great day, great vacation, we had a great visit, but we are both so glad to be home~!