RV, The Movie, Part 2……..Continued

I can’t believe that anything else could possibly go wrong, you say?  Think again!  Read on for the story of the ride home!

Saturday, October 8^th:

Kevin awoke to a start as he looked out the bedroom window and saw snow on the ground.  We had not planned on driving the RV in the mountains in the snow!  This was one of the earliest winter snowstorms they had had out there in a long time.  Of course we timed it just right!  We quickly loaded up the kids and headed out the door.  I can’t tell you how hard it was for us to close to door to our condo that last time and know that we would never go back in again.  It makes me cry even now, writing about it.  Eliana and I cried on and off for most of that morning.  It will be different and somehow strange to go back there to ski and not stay in our condo.  We just have to trust that God has something even better planned for us ahead.  So, having thought that all of the “hard parts” of our trip were behind us, we started out for home.  We didn’t get any further than Vail (20 minutes) when we saw signs saying that the Chain Laws were in effect for Vail Pass and the Eisenhower Tunnel.  We pulled off the interstate immediately to assess what to do.  The bus was included in the list of vehicles requiring chains.  As we tried to solve Situation #11, we talked to a person at the local Napa Auto Parts store on the phone.  He said that we had 2 choices.  Either to try without chains since technically RVs aren’t included in the chain law (but since our RV is more a bus than a camper we weren’t sure about that option) or he could sell us chains and help Kevin put them on.  While Kevin was deciding what to do and looking online at video cams of the interstate ahead, I drove the Suburban to look for better parking for the coach.  When I pulled into an apartment complex to turn around, I came within inches of having a pickup truck loaded with wood and other supplies in the bed back up right into my front fender.  I couldn’t back up fast enough because I was on a downward slope and would slide a little into him.  So I laid on my horn as hard as I could and held my breath.  Luckily, they saw me just in time and that accident, Situation #12, was averted.  Whew!  By now Kevin had made the decision to be safe rather than sorry and we were going to get the chains on the coach.  As we were on the way to the store, the snow stopped for a little while so I checked the Colorado DOT mobile website again.  They had lifted the Chain Laws so we got out of Dodge before it started snowing again.  They were predicting up to 8 inches of snow throughout the day.  As we headed east on I-70 toward Denver we were traveling slowly, but steadily.  The RV was handling fine.

As I was following behind in the Suburban, I suddenly heard a loud flapping/bumping type sound coming from the back of my car.  Situation #13 had only waited a brief 20 minutes to arrive!  I pulled over to the side of the road, called Kevin to tell him that I had stopped to see what was going on, and told him to keep going.  He had the harder driving job and needed to keep moving.  As I went around the side of my Burb, I could hear a loud hissing sound and knew that I had a tire leaking air quickly.  I couldn’t see anything in the tire initially but knew it was leaking.  There was an area ½ mile ahead for trucks to put their chains on so I slowly drove up there to be a little further off the road.  When I parked there and went to look, I saw a large (3-4 inches long) S-hook sticking out of the inside of my tire.  I was toast and all alone in the snow between Vail and Vail Pass.  I called Kevin to tell him about the problem and told him to keep going, I would call AAA.  We just needed to get the RV out of the mountains before we were completely stuck there.  He reluctantly agreed and I called AAA.  The AAA operator was nice, but informed me that I had been dropped from Kevin’s AAA plan.  Situation #14 was already forming.  Kevin’s coverage had technically expired on October 1^st but it was listed as “pending”, awaiting renewal.  She said that they would cover the call if Kevin were present with me.  Of course I had just sent him on ahead so he wasn’t at the car with me.  I tried to convince her that he was on the trip with me, just not in my car….no luck.  I had to decide if I wanted to have him come back to me (it wouldn’t have been easy since there were not very many exits to get on and off of the interstate in that part of the state) or if I wanted to pay cash for it.  I opted to just pay for it so Kevin wouldn’t have to come back.  So I waited there in my car for an hour until the tow truck arrived.  That was a long hour there by myself.  Luckily I had cell phone coverage, plenty of gas, and a Starbuck’s coffee that I hadn’t had time to drink yet!  Finally the tow truck arrived with a very nice man who easily and quickly changed my tire.  We decided to put the damaged tire inside the Burb instead of restoring it underneath and I would stop in Frisco to get it fixed and put back on before I continued through the mountains. 

Why did I pick Frisco, you ask?  Because while I was sitting waiting for the tow truck, Kevin called and informed me that he had to pull off again due to Chain Laws being re-instituted for the Eisenhower Tunnel area ahead.  Situation # 15 hadn’t even let Situation # 14 get resolved before it appeared in our day!  So, to close out #14, when the tow truck driver finished and came to my window, he told me that there was no charge. AAA would cover it.  I was so happy for his show of kindness to me that I could’ve kissed him…..but since I had never seen him before, I opted for an enthusiastic hand shake instead! I thanked him profusely for coming to my aid, and headed off down the road to Frisco.  In Frisco, Kevin and the kids had found a great little deli where they were enjoying a hot bowl of chili and chatting with the owner.  Sounded so good to me!  The deli owner convinced Kevin that people were overreacting by issuing the Chain order because it was the first snow.  He showed Kevin live video of the roads and they appeared to be clear.  Kevin, becoming impatient by now, was convinced to forge ahead.  The owner was able to give me directions on how to get to a tire center to see about getting my tires fixed.  I drove past the deli (wishing I could stop in for a bowl of chili) and straight to the tire store.  I was told that they MIGHT be able to get my tire fixed that day in the next 4 hours.  They were swamped because of the snow today and all the people wanting new tires on their cars….just my bad luck in timing my flat with the first major snow of the season in Colorado!  Situation # 16 had presented itself already.  We had to decide if we wanted to wait all day to get the tire fixed, or if we thought the spare would be fine to make it home.  Luckily the spare tire was a “regular” tire and not a “donut” so we decided to push on and stop further down the road and hope for a shorter wait time for a repair.  Kevin had already gone on to the interstate by then so I headed that way too.  When I was on the entrance ramp to the interstate, I saw that the interstate was a parking lot! 

The “situations” just kept on coming as Situation #17 was at hand!  As I sat at the start of the interstate, I spoke to Kevin on the phone.  There was a jack-knifed truck ahead and the road was closed until they could clean it up.  He recommended that since I was still next to the entrance ramp that I should get off of the interstate and go around Lake Dillon and over to Silverthorne to catch the interstate there.  It looked simple on the map.  There were dozens of cars backing up, turning around, and going the wrong way back UP the entrance ramp off of the interstate.  I joined them and carefully made my way off the interstate.  I started on my way around the lake.  It all went well and the road was good until I had to travel on a mountain road around the last side of the lake.  This road was snow covered, steep, no guardrails in spots, and I was gripping my steering wheel.  I was so glad that Kevin had not tried this in the RV….it would have been a disaster.  I’m sure this road is beautiful in good weather, but the beauty was lost on me this time with my nervousness.  I finally came to the intersection with Hwy 6, a major road.  That is where I made a fatefully bad decision and brought Situation #18 into play.  I should have turned left (or west) onto Hwy 6 to rejoin I-70.  But that seemed counterintuitive to me since we were ultimately trying to get east.  So I turned right onto Hwy 6 thinking I was going the right direction.  This took me through Loveland Pass!  I knew that I was not in a good place when I rarely saw a car, had no cell service, no guardrails, snow packed roads, only one really good driving lane down the middle of the road, and was passing ski resorts that were deserted.  I passed the turn for Breckenridge, went past Keystone, A-Basin, and Loveland ski resorts.  They were all empty and I felt very isolated.  I prayed A LOT during that slow and long drive.  I prayed for Kevin and his safety in the RV with the kids.  I prayed for my safety, driving on my spare tire with no other “spare” in case of an emergency.  I prayed for the weather to clear a little.  I got cell service only occasionally for a brief period of time.  During one of those calls, I found that Kevin and the kids were moving again on I-70.  I was anxious to rejoin them on the interstate, crowded and slowed as it may be.  Finally, I reached the top of Loveland Pass and the Continental Divide….it really brought home to me how far out of the way I had travelled on that road!  I saw many big rigs and a big rig tow truck up there….not very encouraging.  I ventured the rest of the way down very slowly and eventually made it back to I-70.  I could finally loosen the grip on my steering wheel ever so slightly again. All those years of driving in snow and ice in South Dakota prepared me well for what I had to drive in on this day!

Once I was back on the interstate I called Kevin to see how he was faring.  He had a harrowing experience as well; we will call it Situation # 19, as he was going up the steep grade approaching the Eisenhower Tunnel.  There was a reason they were recommending chains for all large vehicles.  As Kevin was going up the mountain his wheels were spinning, he had no traction, and was only able to go about 3 mph.  He was sliding sideways, sweating bullets while the kids are in the back of the coach fighting over a toy, completely oblivious to the fact that they are on the brink of going over the side of the mountain.  To make matters worse, he was in the center lane.  If he moved over to the right lane, he would’ve run into deeper slush and most likely stopped. Then, he would have stopped all traffic, been chastised severely by a highway patrolman, and most likely needed a tow up the mountain.  He just kept going, slipping and sliding away, slowly getting up the mountain.  Then he had to go DOWN the other side!  As he was heading down a 6% grade (very steep), his “check antilock brakes” light stayed on so he was forced to pull off an exit as soon as he possibly could, to deal with Situation # 20.  It would be disastrous thing to be without brakes at this point….those Runaway Truck ramps would leave a lot of gravel in your shorts if you had to use them!  Fortunately, Kevin was able to call a technician at Prevost and they talked him through how to make sure the braked were working properly and how to make the light go off.  We just needed to be safe at this point and we definitely wanted to be sure that the brakes on the RV were working before we went down any further.  Back on track now, we made our way safely down to Denver.  What should have been a 2-hour trip under normal circumstances, ended up taking us 7 hours! 

Shortly after getting to town, we decided to reconnect the Suburban to the RV so we could all be together again.  Kevin exited and started looking for a good parking lot to hook up.  Thinking that he had found a fairly empty parking lot with a wide entrance, he pulled in.  Just when we think we can let down our guards after our harrowing mountain experiences, Situation #21 hits us hard!  As Kevin was turning in the parking lot and trying to avoid a curb and pole, I see from behind him that he isn’t going to make it.  Despite my honking, it was too late and he cuts the turn too close and hits the pole and curb hard.  Fortunately, nobody inside the coach was hurt, but the same couldn’t be said for the coach.  There was significant damage to one of the storage bay doors and some damage to the exhaust pipe for the furnace and Aquahot systems under the bus.  It will be a very expensive repair for sure, but the silver lining is that we were still able to drive it home.  I asked Kevin if we should just stop there and call it a day…we both were spent….but he said no, we needed to keep going.  The flat farmland of Eastern Colorado and Kansas never looked more beautiful to us than it did after our treachery in the mountains! 

We kept driving until we reached the same Oasis in Colby, Kansas that we had stopped at in the windstorm on the drive out to Colorado.  We needed fuel and Kevin was brave enough to pull up to the same pump that sprayed diesel fuel all over him before.  This time the fueling process was much less eventful and actually something very good came out of this stop.  Kevin realized when he went in to leave a credit card for the gas today that he had forgotten his credit card there the first time we were there.  In all of the excitement and his rush to get cleaned up after the dramatic diesel spill, he forgot to pick up his card from the cashier.  Fortunately, they had it and he got it back…a pleasant surprise on a trip filled with things NOT going the way we wanted them to go!  We were able to drive until about midnight before we were too tired to continue.  After consulting the “Next Exit” and finding the closest Cracker Barrel, we parked and slept for the night.  We needed the break!

Sunday, Oct. 9^th:

On Sunday we awoke to a gorgeous, sunny day.  We had made it to Junction City, KS the night before so we had about 9 hours or so to go to get home.  Our goal this day was to get home safely without any more “Situations”.  We made it to St. Louis by noon and were able to get tickets up to the top of the Arch.  It was a fun activity on a trip filled with tough moments that came in what seemed like a “one after another” fashion.  We owed it to the kids to do one thing that was fun and seemed like “vacation”.  It was a breathtaking view at the top of the arch and definitely worth the stop.  It was actually hot in St. Louis, temps in the 80’s…a stark contrast to the snowstorm we were in yesterday in Colorado!  It feels great to be back in the warm sunshine again. 

On the road back to Indiana we encountered another situation, Situation # 22. While driving through central Illinois a rock flew up and hit our windshield.  Of course it made a big chip that left a “shatter” mark.  Now we have one on both sides of the windshield, each directly in the sight line of the driver and the passenger.  Will we ever catch a break on our way home?  I guess we will just have a very long list of repairs for the shop when we finally get the bus home.  We decided shortly after that to at least get the bus washed.  We could barely see through all of the squashed bugs on the windshield and the outside was so dirty and grimy that we didn’t want to touch it.  We pulled into a “Truck-o-matic” wash where a couple of nice kids hand washed the bus.  They did a great job and even “played” with Eliana and Christian by spraying soap and water on them through the windows.  Kevin stepped out of the RV at the end to tip them and on his way back in got doused with the final spray of the bus.  He got cleaned off a little bit and we all got a chuckle out of it!  The rest of the drive went fine.  Construction slowed us down quite a bit, but relatively speaking, that is NOT a “situation”!  We pulled up to our house and made an “all hands on deck” call to Cole, Caleb, and Grammo.  We all worked like a finely tuned assembly line in unloading the RV and the Suburban.  When we were done with that, Kevin, Christian, Dakota (our dog….she would NOT be left behind this time!), and I took off to drop the RV off at the shop for repairs.  We finally got home for good at around 11:00 PM.  We were all thoroughly exhausted and Christian was sacked out in the back seat of the car with Dakota.  As we crawled into bed after a nice hot shower, we went to sleep dreaming about our next trip…in 5 days!  Whew!

Nighty Night!

I guess that I can cross “truck driver” and  “bus driver” off of my list of potential careers for the future!