Strike Two! (National Parks Trip #3)

This post represents another installment in the series documenting our West Coast National Parks trip in the summer of 2017.  Alan and I, along with our 18 year old daughter, Kyra, logged a total of 8,513 memorable miles of adventure over the course of five and a half weeks during the months of July and August.

There are only two photos in this post because I know nobody wants to see pictures of people sitting around crying.  Bear with me, please, and things will get better.  I promise.

On our first day out of the starting blocks, we added an additional two hours of travel due to our return home to pick up the extra contact lenses Kyra had neglected to pack.  Our seven and a half hours of drive time turned into nine and a half, so we knew we had a long day ahead of us when we left home for the second time.  We just didn’t know how long that first day would be.

This Krispy Kreme billboard was the best part of Day #1.

You might remember that we rarely travel without reservations.  Knowing we already have a place to sleep at night greatly reduces my anxiety and increases my enjoyment of our days on the road.  And you know what they say – “Happy wife, happy life.”  Seven and a half hours is an easy day for us.  Don’t judge, please.  When you live on one side of the country and want to get all the way to the other side, long days on the road are a way of life, and we’re all used to it.  On the other hand, nine and a half hours was pushing it.  That first night, we had planned to overnight at one of the RV parking areas on the Ohio Turnpike, so it didn’t really matter what time we showed up.  Westbound on Interstate 80, we just concentrated on making reasonable time and including enough breaks for driver and passengers.

We were still up and downing through the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, only about an hour and a half from the Ohio state line, when the truck suddenly alerted us that the transmission was running hot.  Alan suggested that it might be the hills temporarily taking their toll on our GMC 1500, but he sounded doubtful.  We pulled off the road to allow the transmission to cool down and tried again.  No dice.  The transmission began running hot almost immediately, and Alan recommended that we locate the nearest GMC dealership.  Okay, then.  This day really wasn’t going as planned.  Fortunately, there was a GMC dealership in DuBois, Pennsylvania – not too far up the road from where we were.  Unfortunately, by the time we limped into in DuBois (because, well, late start), the dealership was closed for the evening.  Fortunately, we were somewhat familiar with the area, having stopped there for meal breaks in the past.  Also fortunately for us, the Walmart in town allowed overnight parking, so that’s where we spent the night.

The well-placed Walmart in DuBois, Pennsylvania

The next morning, we were at the GMC dealership when the Service Department opened, and told the Service Manager the Sad Story of Day #1.  Since I don’t remember what we had for dinner last night, and this was nearly five years ago, I had to look up the name of the dealership.  I came up with Spitzer Chevrolet Buick GMC but, honestly, that name didn’t ring a bell at all.  The current Service Manager, whose picture appears on the dealership’s website, is definitely not the same Service Manager who helped us out.  So, either the dealership has changed hands and/or staff members have moved on, or my memory is full of more pin holes than I had originally thought.  I would prefer the former to be true, but I suspect it’s the latter that actually is.  For the sake of this story, which is becoming longer by the minute, let’s just call it the “DuBois GMC.”

The Service Manager told us they had a full schedule that day, but would fit us in to, at least, look at the truck by mid-morning.  Understanding that beggars can’t be choosers, we thanked him profusely and settled down in the waiting area as Strike Two hit the catcher’s mitt, and our trip slowly began to unravel.

True to his word, our truck was in a service bay being examined by around 9:00 a.m.  The Service Manager came to find us shortly thereafter, and he had our mechanic in tow.  Let me tell you, it’s bad news when they take the time to introduce you to your mechanic.  Based on what the mechanic had seen so far, he thought it might be the transmission.  To know for sure, they’d have to drop the transmission pan to see if there were filings and other debris in it.  If so . . . I think what he said was “new transmission,” but what I heard was the sound of our West Coast National Parks trip shattering into a thousand pieces of disappointment.

The Service Manager asked if we wanted to go ahead with dropping the transmission pan.  Not seeing any other alternative, we said yes and asked if there was any possibility of it being done that day.  To our complete surprise, they agreed to do it then and there since the truck was already in the service bay.  However, they were quick to point out that, if the transmission was, indeed, the problem and needed to be replaced, there was no way it would be done immediately.  Parts would have to be ordered and the job would need to be fit into their service schedule.  We would, most likely, be looking at two weeks out.

As we waited to learn the condition of the truck’s transmission and fate of our trip, Kyra lost herself in the Guest Wi-Fi, and Alan and I talked about what our options might possibly be.  We are the least impulsive people you’ll probably ever meet, but we found ourselves actually discussing the possibility of buying a truck off the lot right there in Pennsylvania.  Of course, another option was to scratch the trip that we had waited years to fit in our travel schedule, cancel all of our reservations and head home with our tails between our legs.  Neither option was particularly appealing, and we were heartsick.  The truth was that we planned to replace our 1500 with a 2500 toward the end of 2017, but the thought of having to do it while we were on vacation had, understandably, never crossed our minds.  We were definitely not happy campers.

It wasn’t long before the Service Manager came back with the exact news that we didn’t want to hear: There were plenty of filings in the transmission pan and enough debris that they knew the transmission would need to be replaced.  Because the truck was still under its 100,000 mile warranty, the repairs would be covered by GMC whether they were done at home or on the road.  The mechanic believed that changing the transmission fluid would buy us enough time to get the truck back home, but towing the travel trailer and hoping for the best wouldn’t be safe at all.  Dammit!  Now what do we do?!  Think, think, think.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch . . . Before we left for our West Coast trip, we had dropped off our powerboat at the Marine Service Department of our Chaparral dealership.  During our first attempt to use the boat that season, we had a problem with the engine not running properly and had to cut short our outing.  Alan noticed that one of the freeze out plugs had popped out - meaning that some amount of water had probably frozen inside the engine.  Alan’s fine with run of the mill repairs and maintenance, but this was a job for the pros.  The Service Manager at the Chaparral dealership promised that they’d take a good look at it, and cautioned Alan that there was definitely a possibility that the engine would need to be replaced.  The Service Manager planned to keep the boat for the five plus weeks we were away, and assured us he’d be in touch by phone as additional info became available.

While we were think, think, thinking in the waiting area at the DuBois GMC about what to do with truck and travel trailer, Alan’s phone rang.  It was the Service Manager at the Chaparral dealership with even more bad news.  There was enough damage to the boat engine that the only way to fix it was to put in a brand new engine.  Dammit – times two!  The statistical chances of having to deal with two major mechanical failures like this on the same day must have been astronomical.  However, apparently, there is nothing that cannot happen on any given day.  Since there’s not much you can do with a boat that has no engine, Alan gave the Service Manager the go ahead to replace the engine, and I envisioned lots and lots of dollar bills dribbling out of our bank account.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never used the word “predicament” in a blog post before because we try to keep ourselves out of them.  Not this time.  We were in a predicament with a capital “P” and we needed to figure out what to do next.  The decision about the boat engine was an expensive, but easy, one to make.  Not so much with the truck.  We knew we couldn’t hunker down in DuBois, Pennsylvania, for two weeks waiting for a new transmission.  We asked our mechanic to go ahead and change the transmission fluid and close up the truck.  We canceled our reservations at an Army Corps of Engineers campground in Illinois for that night and the next.  Then we settled in to figure out Plan B.