He said, “The truck just broke down, so stay in town since we might not be able to go now.”
We pulled into a coffee shop parking lot and hi-jacked their WiFi to look up rental car agencies and see if we could get another truck for the weekend. After about 2 hours on the phone, we found one – for $100 a day!!! UGH! But, it would seat six people – more than we needed – so we could eliminate the gas in the second car to help offset the expense.
Meanwhile, Dave and Brian contacted a customer of his that was relatively close by and had him send a tow truck for them. Wow. That was quite the tow bill for the truck AND boat! Our trip cost nearly doubled and we hadn’t even left!
While he was waiting for the tow truck, he called his sister who has a truck, asking if we could borrow it. She said, “Sure! It’s in the garage and we’re out of town, so just go get it and you can use it for the weekend.” They live near us, so Sarah and I headed over there to do a car swap, planning to leave the Camry there, and take the truck down to meet Dave, Brian, and the boat. Lo and behold, when we arrived at their house, there was nothing in the garage but an empty space. I called Dave back with the news, and he learned from his sister that they had actually taken the truck to the airport when they left town. We could use their 4-Runner, but it was in the shop – about ten miles and 90-minutes away in construction traffic. So . . . Sarah and I went in their house and followed directions to the location of the key, went to the shop to get the 4-Runner, took the Camry back to our house (which, although about 30 miles away was faster than going back through construction traffic to park it at their place for the weekend), transferred all of our belongings, got the GPS and iPod that we had previously forgotten, installed Dave’s new pond filter which hadn’t arrived (much to his dismay) before he left, and finally go on the road to meet Dave and Brian – and the boat – at about 6:00. We got a lot accomplished in that four hour delay!
Once we connected, we drove together to Beaver (about 2 hours south of us) to pick up Tanner, and finished up our drive to Page, Arizona. We were grateful to have our GPS since we’d not been to the south end of the lake in about 20 years, and would be unexpectedly arriving after dark. The GPS estimated that we would arrive at 11:45. Well, that time came and went, right about when we passed a mileage indicator that said we had another 88 miles to go. What?? Oh yeah, Arizona doesn’t recognize Daylight Savings, so we lost an hour. We finally pulled in around 1:00 a.m.
Our room was great, with 2 big beds plus a roll-away for Tanner, a large patio, and a gorgeous view of the lake (which we discovered the next morning). We all slept like babies, and spent the next three days wakeboarding, fishing, cliff diving, swimming, tubing, running up and down a sand hill, and getting way too much sun. Monday morning, we enjoyed the restaurant’s breakfast buffet before getting back on the road home. The return seemed much faster, partially because we gained the hour back, but mostly because the car didn’t break down! We made quick work of getting unpacked, cleaning and vacuuming the inside of the borrowed 4-Runner, running it through the car wash and filling the tank, & returning it to Dave’s sister, and then had our ‘last splurge’ at Chili’s for a late night dinner.
Now, it’s back to reality! We’re both at work, Brian’s at school, and Sarah’s home working on her online classes.
Since each is worth 1,000 words, I’ll let these tell the story of the trip itself.
