The Trek Home

I never finished my 'driving home from Utah saga'.

So I was driving with the Hoyts instead of flying home like I had originally planned. We planned on leaving between 6-7am, but there was a large house that needed some packing and cleaning so we ended up leaving around 9:30ish. The car was a big puzzle to pack everything in, it was difficult, but we did it :).

We drove for about 2 hours and we were in somewhere(nowheres)ville Idaho. We stopped at a rest stop to use the facilities. Once everyone was back in the car, driver David turned the key over to start the car. Click. Tried again. Click. Stay calm, try again, and again, and once more to make sure. Nope that car was not starting. We all said a bunch of prayers and crossed all our fingers. Hailey and I checked all the inside stuff to make sure it was in working order (seatbelts, mirrors, door handles, cupholders, etc.....) it was really just to distract us while David and his mom found some guys to help us out. There ended up being 4-5 guys who tried to come to our rescue. To no avail. That thing was not budging.

A tow truck was called, they are an hour and a half away so we laid out the one blanket we had and grabbed out a box that had some food in it and made ourselves a little picnic on the side of the freeway. Cute. People looked at us like what in the world are they doing. We also tried to take naps and fed the birds crust from the bread we were eating. Luckily there was a breeze otherwise it would have been a HOT wait.

Finally we see a small little tow truck pull in, to haul a huge suburban 1.5 hours down the freeway. Alright.

(I have pictures of this whole thing but my phone is charging and I am much to lazy after playing on the mountain today to get it).

We put the car in neutral and pushed it back so it could be loaded onto the truck bed. David did a good job helping the guy load it up. I had to climb in the car while it was on an incline to get in the passenger seat. Because you know, little tow trucks only have room in the cab for 2 people. Guess what that means?

We got to pretend we were in a parade and drive in the suburban on top of the tow truck flat bed. It was the most odd, exhilarating, terrifying, hysterical moment of my life. It felt like we were tipping the entire time and it was SOOOOO hot in that darn car and rolling the windows down made it really loud and windy so we only had them open for a bit. I might have had to implement lamase breathing into our ride. 1.5 hours is a LONG time on bumpy, uneven roads. I was looking forward to waving at cars and trucks as we passed but we maybe saw like 14 cars/trucks and only one guy saw me wave.

Is that even legal? I would think not.....but it was an experience.

We sat at the little podunk car shop for maybe 4-5 hours while they found the part they needed and fixed it. We were nervous because we could hear them working on it and after they installed the part, it still didn't turn on. About an hour later they finally got it to work thank goodness. We tried not to stop at rest stops after that.

We ended up driving like a quarter way home that day. We found a hotel that was way nicer than the other motels we were seeing in the middle of nowhere town. There was a car show and the hotel was FULL as we walked in to see if there were rooms available, the lady on the phone said she would cancel the reservation, turns out she just cancelled 2 rooms for that night, the ONLY 2 rooms in the entire building that were free. Score.

It was nice to lay down in air conditioning. Hailey and I shared a room and talked and slept.

The next morning I washed my hair with lotion. That felt nice......

Then we were on the road again. We stopped at Miners Diner for lunch which apparently is the hip place to eat. It was pretty dang good. We felt sick afterwards though SO SO full.

We finally made it home around 6pm Saturday, after leaving at 9:30am Friday. I would have been home at 1pm Friday if I had flown hahahaha. Hailey kept saying, you'd be sitting on your couch right now. I'll be honest, that thought crossed my mind several times.

It was an adventure.