Not much to report. It was a long day on the road but we got a lot of miles in. Went from Idaho, through Utah and half way through Wyoming. The Lord provided another nice spot for the night and we have a full tank of gas for tomorrow. We'll sleep good tonight.
I woke up to flies after a really good sleep. Coffee first.
My husband came up with an excellent solution for the flies. He has a very powerful mini shop-vac and between the two of us we sucked up a significant portion of the flies. It will probably take a couple days of sucking to get them all – but it helped solve that problem.
My husband took the overflow tank off and washed it and dried it thoroughly. Then he put on more clear gorilla tape – a much better and secure job than before. But he couldn't get the radiator cap off – try as he might. I continued praying for him and after a couple hours – a man came along and was able to get it off. Angel? Maybe. Lol – I don't know but my husband was finally able to put in new radiator fluid and we were able to hit the road again.
It was later in the day when we truly appreciated God's timing with the first tape job failing like it did. Where we had a place to work on it, get a good night's sleep, (have excellent wifi!), and repair the radiator and overflow tank. Because the next leg of the trip was unexpected and we never would have made it.
Steep mountain roads with curves that go on forever. Miles and miles of low grade mountains that were overheating the long haul trucks and other RV's. We had to pull over several times to let the engine cool down. We realized how very stranded we could have been on a side of a mountain with no way back down – only up, up, up. We had breakfast at one of the cool down spots, so thankful there was no leaks and that God made sure we were not stranded on the side of a mountain. He is so awesome!
We hit Mountain time before we hit the Idaho border. It was now an hour later and we were starting to feel it. Finally we were in Idaho. Buh-bye Oregon – won't be missing you! We started looking for a place to stay for the night. We passed two RV park signs on the interstate but we weren't able to get over to take the exit. It was getting late so I said, “I think we should stop in Mountain Home no matter what.”
As we got near Mountain Home one of the road signs said, “Mountain Home RV Resort”. We thought – yes! Finally. We took the exit and drove through the main part of town. No signs saying RV Resort and no RV resort. We started to realize that we were now on a strange road and started looking for a place to turn around. There was no place to turn around. Understand that with the tow dolly pulling our car we were now over 55-60 feet long. You need a lot of room to turn something like that around. So we kept on the road we were on and then we started laughing. This road took us right back to I-84 East. I guess we wont be staying in Mountain Home after all.
The next town we found a great little RV park with a pull-through spot, green grass for the dog and again excellent wifi! Plus it cost half as much to stay than the place we stayed the night before (which was not very expensive in the first place). It ended up being an excellent day. Thank you Lord!
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.
