LLV Day Three: Beaver Bound

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Friday morning I had to drag myself out of bed. Normally, I have an easier time getting up, but for some strange reason, at this point in the trip I was utterly exhausted. I could have slept in, but the day before during our long hiatus at the park, Camie had walked over to the pool and learned that they had lap swim from 6:30-8:00am. Being the determined-to-exercise freaks that we are, we decided to get some laps in. We had plenty of time; the part for the motor home wasn’t even supposed to be in until 9 am.

The Kanab pool was wonderful. It was warm and clean (not green and cloudy like my community pool.) I had to share a lane with Camie, which was utterly humiliating. The girl hasn’t swam laps in about 10 years, yet she effortless stroked across the pool three times as fast as I did, and while I had to break every 50 yards and gasp for breath, she just kept on going and going, a regular little Energizer bunny (or fish, rather.) It’s just not fair! Anyway, I gave up after my usual 500 yards, but Camie decided to stay and swim longer, so I headed out for my jog on my own. Kanab was nice and quiet, and best of all, it was still cool at 7 am. Heavenly!

Without Brandi to push me, I cut my jog short and headed back to the motel after having only done half the distance I should have. Terence probably appreciated that though because I came in and took the kids off his hands. This was our second morning of motel “hot” breakfasts, but this place was super busy. Between feeding K his squash (yummy!) and trying to keep J from pouring his sixteenth bowl of cereal and trying to coax B to eat her food , it was hard to get food in my own mouth. Eventually I gave up and left the breakfast room still hungry. Such is motherhood, right?

The fuel pump made it in as scheduled and the repair shop did a great job of installing it as quickly as possible. For once, things were looking up. The motel kindly extended our checkout time until noon, so we pretty much hung out and watched TV until my long-suffering father pulled the blasted motor home into the parking lot. Again, we loaded up the motor home and set out for Park City. This time the goal was to get there in time for dinner.

Nobody was quite as confident as we were the day before, but we were cautiously optimistic when we made it over the next summit and down onto the I-15. Now we had a relatively easy drive up the freeway.

We had only been on the freeway for a mile when my dad muttered, “It’s happening again.” We shouldn’t have been surprised, but quite honestly, I was. Dad had to repeat that he was not joking, the motor home was dying again. Soon we were coasting onto the shoulder again. This was no mere motor home. It was the physical incarnation of evil itself trying to torment us.

Unlike the previous couple of days, this time the malicious RV would not start again no matter how long my dad tried nor how desperately we prayed for deliverance from this rolling tomb. The generator would not work anymore either, so we had no A/C. Unfortunately, this was not a cool section of Utah so we slowly started to roast. The next round of mind-numbing calls to the Roadside Assistance people began. Even still, we waited in the baking heat for over an hour before a tow truck finally ambled up to help us.

We got towed the short distance into Beaver and found ourselves in the same predicament as the other two days. Still three hours from Park City and nowhere to go, and an indefinite wait before the RV would be fixed. This time my dad refused to accept El Monte’s plan to just wait until the RV got fixed again. Instead, he adamantly insisted that they deliver a new motor home to us. Eventually they agreed but explained that they wouldn’t be able to get one to us until the next morning. It looked like we would be spending yet another night in the Comfort Inn.

(To Be Continued . . . Again)