Day 1: Lord of the Flies

 

Tuesday morning had finally arrived – two weeks after I quit my job. We had coffee and I made us a yummy spinach omelet with blue cheese for breakfast. We were ready to hit the road.

It was an easy ride. 99-E to I-5 south to 205 to I-84 East. Smooth sailing.

Our plan was to stay at a Flying J in either La Grande or Baker City depending on how far my husband could drive that day. The Father, however, had other plans.

The RV began to overheat about 30 miles before Pendleton. There was a Pilot Truck stop that my husband pulled into where there was an RV repair shop. My husband parked a ways away from it and walked over to talk to someone. He came back 10 minutes later to say they closed at noon. It was 2:30pm. My husband thought the truck stop was shady and wanted to keep going. We got back on I-84 E. We passed a sign saying “Echo 1 mile”. The temp gauge was in the red again so he said he has taking the next exit. I said that it was just a road – there was no place to stop there. He took the exit and there was a little gravel driveway with a big tent garage where we pulled in. I was thinking it was probably a secret entrance to an underground tunnel, but I digress.

Long story short – the landlord of the old park had helped my husband get the RV road ready and had accidentally broken the radiator overflow tank and had patched it together with clear gorilla tape. The tape had lasted for the first leg of the trip but was done now and leaking all over the place. My husband went through all the stages of grief; anger, denial, etc. We couldn't go forward. We were going to have to go back to the truck stop.

The truck stop ended up being nice and behind the truck stop was a very nice RV park. Not too expensive – with green grass and a picnic table. We were good for the night to assess the overheating problem. But there was another problem to attend to.

Flies.

Lots and lots of flies. Somehow at the road we had stopped at – even though it didn't seem like we had the door open for any length of time – hundreds of flies had invaded our home. They were all over the place. On the ceiling, on the floor, all over the dog bowl. It just added to the misery. Our plan to have healthy salads for dinner was ruined because no one could make any food around all those flies. It was really disgusting. My husband was having a hell of a time, tired, hungry, mad. I got some take-out food from the truck stop and we had dinner on the picnic table.

After we had dinner, we had time to discuss what happened. The overflow tank situation should have been handled properly while we had the two weeks to prepare for the move. Because it wasn't handled at the time, it opened the door for the adversary to attack us – with the overheating and then the flies as an added insult. God was not going to leave us stranded. We prayed about the radiator and we prayed about the flies. We needed God's help more than ever – and exhausted, we went to bed.