X-Country

Our Cross Country Journey, written by Dane

We started in Grand Junction, CO at my parent’s house. We left early Monday morning on August 8^th and planned to get to Omaha Nebraska that day. Over the past month or two our car has had quite a few necessary repairs that have added up to more money than you ever expect or want to spend. We had to have our transmission replaced and a week or two after we had gotten our car back from that, our radiator started leaking like crazy every time we drove the car anywhere. It turned out that we had a crack in it and that had to be replaced as well. Three weeks later we drove to Ouray, CO for our 2^nd anniversary and about a mile and a half from my aunt and uncles cabin there, our car just shut off, like we had run out of gas. My dad had been doing some work on their house and made a special trip the next day to come and help us out. He brought his trailer to tow our car back to GJ, and accomplished some work there as well. To add insult to injury, we had to walk that mile and a half from our car to their house in the rain with as many things as we needed to spend the night. We were soaked by the end of our walk. Here's a picture from our walk in the rain in Ouray.

 

The diagnosis on our car was that the fuel filter was plugged which forced a leak in the fuel line, (simple fix)  But they also noticed that some oil was leaking from our engine coolant lines, so those needed to be replaced, (a $500 fix).

We packed up our car and could not believe how much stuff we put in it. We only had to leave a couple of things behind. Aimee showed some amazing Tetris skills to put just a couple more things in every little spot she could find. As we are unpacking we will find socks and shirts packed into all kinds of spots including our blender and crock pot.

We got on the road and about two and half hours in we could feel and hear something strange going on in one of our wheels. It was a blessing, no doubt, for things to happen where they did. We started hearing a clunking sound in the front left wheel as we had to stop for some construction on I-70. We immediately knew that we had to pull off and it just so happened that Wal-Mart was right off the interstate. They had put new tires on our car a year and a half before (sorry Scott, we still regret that). We pulled in and they took the cap off to expose our lug nuts and see what may have been going on. One of the lug nuts, and the stud it was screwed onto just rolled out onto the ground. We had snapped that one off and all of the other nuts on there were so loose it would not have taken much for us to lose our tire had we driven much further. We pulled over just in the nick of time. The tire guys got that tire screwed back on as tightly as possible and referred us to a mechanic just a mile or two away. They fixed it, and within a 2 hour stop that could have been MUCH worse, we were back on the road. We feel watched over as we saw how close we were to losing our wheel in the middle of the mountains. 

The rest of the trip was great. We made a number of great stops along the way:

Nauvoo

 

Wrigley Field and South Bend

 

 Kirtland

 

Niagara Falls

 

and Palmyra.

 

And we finally made it to Aimee’s parents house where we will be for the next two weeks before we move into our new apartment. We are so excited for the next 4 years here in Boston!!!