Hard Road- Day 2

My grandpa lacks the ability to sleep in. Because of this, all of our mornings began early no matter how late we got to bed the night before. The second day we left WY and headed to Nebraska. We stopped at the world headquarters of Cabelas. It wasn't as big as I was expecting but some of the family found some great treasures inside. (this included beef jerky, ammo, and life jackets) When we hit the road again so did the rain. It poured all day long. A benefit of driving out with my parents was that Katie didn't have to stay in her car seat when riding in the motor home. The picture is of her looking out the front window driving down the road.

Well the day was going well, except the rain, when we reached the outskirts of Lincoln Nebraska. The problem came when there was a detour for construction. The GPS wanted us to go one way and the signs said to go another. Multiple stop lights and a little confusion we finally made it past Lincoln and on the road to St. Joseph MO. We decided to stay at a campground and called ahead to make sure there would be openings. When we got there it was a dump with only one site left. It was off the beaten path and down the dirt road. While we stopped to check on the campground we found that Rick's truck was yet again falling off. We decided to bag the campground and head once again for Walmart. It took the guys a couple of hours, drilling holes, and another tow kit in order to fix the problem. It was about midnight when the guys finally made it back into the motor home for dinner. Don't forget that my grandpa wakes up early so the drivers were looking at 5-6hrs of sleep at most and we are only 2 days in. By this point we were wondering what else could go wrong.

Hard Road- Day 1

We are here. Right here in Harrogate TN. The trip was a wild ride out. Packing like crazy we closed the moving truck just before 1 am and left our little house in Lake Shore on Thursday. Friday morning came after a really long night of anticipation and brought with it a list of things that still needed to be done before left. So we set to work hoping to get out close to our departure time. This is when my grandparents joined. After a little coaxing my grandma Engle went into the ER in payson to check if she had a blood clot. At the hospital they did an ultrasound on her leg and found no clot. The doctor said that she had probably just over worked herself and needed to relax and put her leg up for the next couple of days. Not a problem with a motorhome driving across country. When my grandparents got back from the hospital we were just finishing up the last minute items, including grabbing the cold cereal from the house I forgot to pack. We headed down the road.
Just outside of Green River WY Rick swerved to avoid something in the road. The thing in the road was the side panel from my parents motorhome. The rear inside (dual tire system) tire blew and it fried the electrical wires around the tire and blew the side panel. Rick went running down the highway to pick up the panel while my grandpa started waiving truckers into the other lane. Luckily no one ran over the wreckage and we were able to salvage the panel. While stopped for the flat, we went to get some tools from our rental truck when we found that the tow bar holding rick's 72' pickup to our rental truck had lost its pins and started pulling away. After some beating and one wire hanger later we were able to start down the road 19 miles into Rock Springs in order to get the tire fixed on the motorhome. We rolled into the tire shop at 5:30 that closed at 6pm, they only had one tire that size left. They were able to get the tire on in no time, gave my mom a discount, and only charged her $3 in labor. While we waited at the tire shop Rick bought some bolts to replace his pins on the tow bar. We were off to the races again.
We had barely left Rock Springs when my grandparents radioed that they needed to know where the papers to our car were because the nice officer was asking for them. You see they were pulled over in WY because in UT they require vehicles to have license plates on the front of all vehicles. Something we were missing. My grandpa, being the old farmer he is, explained the whole situation to the officer who was nice enough to give them a "this is not a citation" and sent them down the road. Grandma radio back that the "this is not a citation" was located in the glove box. I replied that it was a great place because it would match the one I got in AZ for another license plate issue. Gratefully we were able to get into Laramie WY without any further delay. This all happened in one day. No we didn't get as far as we wanted and a lot went wrong but we were all safe and very tired. I will tell you about the rest of the trip later, Katie is ready to go to bed.

Quick Update

Life is a little busy at the moment so please forgive me if I do not write as much as I should.
For Memorial Day we joined my family on the desert for some camping. Rick was really excited. I think he had a grin all weekend long. We camped at Joy. It use to be a mining community so now you can find mines all around. We even had an encounter with a rattle snake. Luckily no one was bit. Pretty much Rick rode a 4-wheeler the entire weekend and got my dad's truck stuck in the sand.

Camping had some sentimental value because it was the first time my family had gone camping on the desert since my grandfather died. Also it was Katie's first camping trip which included her first four wheeler ride. During my first camping trip my parents took a picture of me in a red checkered dress so we did the same thing with Katie. Enjoy the pictures
So now I'm busy packing up the house while Rick is at camp for the national guard. I would like to thank everyone that has brought me packing supplies and has helped in the packing process. Hopefully the box loading will be over soon so I can move into the deep cleaning stage.