Our Trip: A Retrospective Part I

Since Holly finished up her first year of nursing school on Wednesday, she thought that it would be fun to go on a little vacation during her week and a half break. You see, she starts her RN year next week and wanted to do more than just sit at home doing nothing during her time off. I agreed with her and so the planning began.

Since neither of us had ever been to Zions National Park or Bryce Canyon National Park, we decided that we should take a road trip through Utah and enjoy some of the beautiful scenery that this state has to offer. We booked our hotels and I told my boss I was leaving for a few days, then we loaded up the van and started driving.

Thursday morning, we got up early and left the house at 7:00. I wondered if this was huge mistake because I knew that we would be hitting the morning rush hour. I was right. It took us two and a half hours to get from Syracuse to Orem. By that point, I was totally exhausted and we all needed a break. Holly needed to fill a prescription so we stopped at Target and hung out there for almost an hour while the pharmacist took her own sweet time putting 30 pills into a bottle.

Once we got back on the road, we started making up for lost time. We expected to arrive at Zions somewhere around 3:30 that afternoon. Then we arrived in Filmore. None of us had ever visited the Territorial Statehouse there so we decided to stop. I love history so it was very interesting to learn new things about Utah’s past. The kids seemed to enjoy it as well but Alex was concerned over the fact that they had a jail cell in the basement. He came to the conclusion that since there was a jail, there must be a bad guy somewhere.

After we had seen all that there was to see in Filmore, which didn’t take long, we got back on the road. Next stop: Zions.

Somewhere around Beaver, Holly mentioned that the car sounded funny. She also said that she smelled something burning. I listened and could only hear the road, and I didn’t smell anything, so I didn’t think much of it. We got off of the freeway near La Verkin, which for those of you who don’t know, is a very small town in the middle of nowhere, and I finally heard the car making strange noises. It sounded like something was grinding so I pulled over and popped the hood. Sure enough, something was making a lot of unnatural noises and the smell of burning rubber permeated the air. My first thought was that a bearing was messed up so we decided that we should find a mechanic to see what the problem was. We headed down the road towards Hurricane hoping to find somebody who could get us back on the road.

After about half a mile, we found an auto shop so we pulled over. They were pretty busy but offered to take a look at things. It took the mechanic about 30 seconds to determine that the AC compressor was in bad shape. He told me that it it would totally blow within 40 miles. That’s how bad it was. If it did blow, the possibility existed that the whole engine would be damaged and need to be replaced. At least that’s what the trained professional told me. I could see, hear, and smell that there was a need for this to get fixed as soon as possible. The mechanic told me that he could get us back on the road within a few hours but to properly fix things, it would take a day. We left the van there and walked across the street to a park where the kids played out the afternoon. Three hours later, the van was repaired enough to allow us to drive into St. George and get a rental car that we could use while the van was being repaired.

While we were in St. George, we went out to dinner with Holly’s sister, Carol and her kids. I had told Holly that I wanted to eat at the new In-and-Out Burger. Apparently the lines were out the door and the drive-thru had about 25 cars in it so we ended up going to The Olive Garden instead. The kids all had a lot of fun and it was nice to see Carol.

After dinner, we dropped the van back off at the mechanic in La Verkin and headed on to Zions. It was about 9:00 when we finally arrived at the hotel in Springdale. What should have been a six hour drive had taken fourteen hours! We put the kids to bed and I watched the Jazz lose to the Rockets. There were things that we had planned on doing that night but, because of our breakdown, we didn’t have time to do. It was still a good day though, despite our breakdown.

Remember when you’d be watching a TV show and realize that there was only a couple of minutes left but there was no way that things would be wrapped up before the show ended? That’s what’s happening here.

To be continued…