Our Sunday Stroll

We've been in Utah for the last week and just returned yesterday. The kids and I had a blast being thoroughly spoiled. I'll share some of our days on a later post. For now I have to tell you about our adventure to get home yesterday. Joseph blames it all on the fact that we were traveling on the Sabbath. :D

We left Tooele about 9:15. My parents traveled half way with us; my mom drove my suburban while my sister and dad followed behind in another vehicle. We parted ways at Wells, NV. They headed back to Tooele while we continued on to home. About 15 miles before Elko, NV I heard some funny clinking noises come from under the hood. The noises stopped but then I saw smoke coming out the back. TONS. OF. SMOKE. As I looked in the rear view mirror, I could barely see a light blue van flashing its lights at us. We just happened to be next to an exit so we pulled off and the van followed. As soon as we stopped the male driver hopped out and ran to look under the suburban. He started cussing and swearing and ordered me to turn the truck off. We were leaking transmission fluid. The whole undercarriage of the truck was covered in fluid and so were the back tires. The guy's van also had fluid sprayed all over the front. The next words out of his mouth were, "Do you have someone you can call to come get you?"

I called Joseph who was in the middle of teaching at church. He talked to the fellow who stopped, who, you can thank my lucky stars, was a mechanic and ex-tow truck operator. He was sure we could make it to Elko where Joseph would meet us at the McDonald's. I'm telling you the man who stopped to help was really an angel in disguise. He looked scary - long hair, beer belly, tattoos, the works- but he knew what he was doing. Instead of getting back on I-80 he told me to take the road we had pulled off onto and it would take us right into Elko. I had the girls all pile back into the suburban and that gentleman followed us all the way into Elko going 35 miles per hour. We pulled into the McDonald's parking lot where he took one more look at the truck. He said we were dang (well okay his language was much stronger than that) lucky the transmission hadn't ceased with all the traffic going by he was sure there would have been a major accident. I thanked him profusely for helping us and he got in his van and drove off.

We hung out at the McDonald's play area for about an hour, then drove to the back where there was a nice shaded grassy area. We waited for about 4 hours for Joseph to come with a trailer to haul the suburban back. My brother-in-law, Darren, also came with his suburban so we could all fit to drive back home. There was a mix-up because I forgot there were two McDonald's in Elko so poor Joseph was searching the parking lot of the other MikeeDee's worrying because we weren't there and, of course, the phone service was terrible so he couldn't even call me to see where we were. He found us though. The kids were loaded up into my BIL's truck while our suburban was loaded onto the trailer. We headed for home only to be stopped at Carlin, the next town after Elko. The interstate had just been closed because of fire. All traffic was ordered off the interstate. We had to wait in Carlin for another 4 hours until the highway was reopened. To keep the girls occupied we played catch and walked around the Carlin cemetery looking at all the names and dates on the headstones. The girls were really well-behaved, especially because of all the waiting they'd had to do. Finally, FINALLY we were able to get back on the interstate and go home. We arrived home at 10pm, about 13 hours after we had started. It's only supposed to take us 5 hours to get home. What a day.