When we went to Utah for the 4th of July, our van broke down on the way down. It must have just been a bad tank of gas from Maverik or Tesoro because we never could figure out what was wrong with it, even with gauges all hooked up to it.
Since we had a van full of people with us on the first breakdown, we were hesitant to take people the next time, in case of more problems.
This time we only found one rider, and she was only one-way. We made it to Utah safely (no towing like the last time), but shortly after we arrived in Provo, our van started overheating!!!
It was really hot, so we had to let the kids get out each time it overheated.
Roland gave us his tickets to the BYU football game, but it was such a hot day that I couldn't bear thinking about sitting in the sun, so we gave the tickets to Dallas and Weston, who had never been to a BYU game before. They loved it, but were seated at the very top, in direct sun. I think I would have died!
We went to Jon and Elisabeth's house next. They have a field that is a kid's paradise, just like my parents' field was. The kids all disappeared behind the tall weeds getting lost in their imaginations and...making their own toilets (yikes!).
Paisli was having fun of her own in the house, falling off the dining room chair and smacking her head on the corner of a cabinet, giving herself an enormous goose-egg on her forehead.
Look at her poor profile!
We spent most of our trip trying to figure out why the van was overheating. We replaced a part that seemed bad and tried some other things until the van seemed to be fixed. We decided to head home a day early to give Hyrum time to get things together before the semester started.
On our way home, we stopped at Cabelas to get our favorite pretzels, and this time I noticed that the kind of moose they have on display are "Shiras Moose", as in my little sister, Shira. (I just recently noticed that the moose head at BYU-I is a Shiras Moose also.)
After Cabelas, we went up to temple square to let the boys walk around. They hadn't been there since they were toddlers, when Weston got lost there.
We went across the street and saw the Conference Center for the first time ever, but it was dark and we had to get back on the road so we couldn't walk around it.
Back on the road again, we overheated in Tremonton, which of course is too far from any help and all mechanics were closed, so we limped to a hotel to see if we could get a mechanic to take a look at it in the morning. Naturally, the mechanic said he couldn't find anything wrong with it and couldn't get it to overheat, so he topped off the reservoir and back we were on the road again. We got up to the Malad pass when we overheated again. We called the mechanic and told him we were broken down again, so he sent us back to Malad to have his mechanic friend look at it, who of course couldn't find anything wrong with it, so again the reservoir was topped off (when we'd overheat, the reservoir would boil over and spill out a lot of antifreeze and water), and off we drove again. We went the back way to the freeway to avoid the mountain pass, and we found the coolest fence! Both sides of the road had cowboy boots topping off each fence pole. This was a more exciting find than the shoe tree of Eastern Oregon (which no longer exists...it must have died)! How did they get so many boots? Does each passerby just take their boots off and donate them to the ornamentation of Malad's backroads?
We made it almost to Pocatello before we had another overheating episode. This time, after the van would cool down, we could only drive a few miles before overheating again. It was late in the afternoon by now, and at this rate, we wouldn't get home for at least another day, but nursing school was starting for Hyrum in the morning and the first day was mandatory. We had to get home!
A few state troopers pulled over to help, but none had any mechanic experience.
We spent most of the day with this view.
It was roasting hot in the van, but we were next to the freeway and it was a little scary to let the kids out.
As grumpiness began to manifest...
And the sweat started to roll...
And boredom set in...
out came the squirt bottle. You see, on top of the overheating problem, there was a strange air leak sound in the dash, and our air conditioning hadn't been working for a while in the front of the van (the kids were fine in the back), so I had started carrying around a squirt bottle to mist myself as we drove so I wouldn't get too hot. It came in handy this day, and Hyrum never misses a chance to tease the kids.
Needing a bathroom break was inevitable.
At our last breakdown spot, we finally called a tow truck so we could get home before school started. While we waited, the kids climbed some rocks with Dallas.
The tow truck driver had us all get in the van since we had too many people for his cab and we rode on top of his bed. It felt like being in the top deck of a double-decker bus.
He towed us to Pocatello where he dropped some of us and took the rest back to our place in Rexburg (costing us $300 after what insurance covered). Hy has wonderful family in Blackfoot who lent us their Suburban so the rest of us could get home.
It goes without saying that I now HATE this van.
