On Friday the 10th of June we got up early and got our things in Hal's car. We were going to drive him and his car down to Texas so he would have a car to drive while he did his new job selling pesticide. He was offered a job by a person he met while serving his mission in Dallas, Texas. Hal came home from his mission and stayed with us for 3 weeks while he got his school things arranged among other things. He was able to find a house for the school year at Utah State and get everything enrolled and ready.
Friday was the big day and I had been dreading it because it was going to be a long drive in a car that had mostly sat around for the last several years. We didn't know how reliable it would be. Also as he was driving back from Salt Lake City not long ago the car had started cutting out a little. I was a little anxious to be sure.
We were ready to say our goodbyes and leave at about 8:40. We had a pleasant ride up and over the pass into Jackson. We gassed up there and headed toward Pinedale. A little after Pinedale we felt a little sputter from the engine. There was a gas station a few miles out of town so we stopped and took a look at it. I didn't see anything wrong. We topped off the gas and went on our way. Periodically it sputtered after that and I decided to stop in Farson and get some gas treatment. We stopped there and I bought some Heet as well as some injector cleaner and gas treatment. I put the injector cleaner in first. The car actually ran fairly well for a little while and didn't sputter until just before Rock Springs. We got on the freeway and I was just praying that we would make it. I was really dreading being stranded on the road with a deadline to get somewhere and a plane to catch on the way back.
It ran pretty well until about Rawlins and then while climbing a big hill it really started cutting out bigtime. I decided to pull off in Rawlins even though I didn't like the thought of another stop. We filled up the tank with premium gas this time. We got some snacks and ice and ate for a sec. Then we hit the highway again and the car ran smooth until just before Laramie. I decided I would stop again in Laramie and put the Heet in the gas tank. The weird thing was I was not able to pull off to an easy gas station and for some reason I just decided to keep going. It wasn't far to the Colorado border and I figured we could hit a gas station then. The only problem was there were no gas stations until Fort Collins. We got to Fort Collins after having only a few blips and then I filled the tank with premium gas and put in half a bottle of Heet.
We ate at McDonald's and it was nice to get out of the car and walk around.
I decided to let Hal drive as I had driven the whole day and by now it was around 5:30. I thought it would be good if I navigated him around Denver as well. We got in and traffic was really bad on I25 until we got to the bypass that went around Denver by the airport. It looked like it would be a shortcut to use that even though it was a toll road. I bet it cut an hour off our trip. We did miss that exit but was able to get back on shortly. As we were driving around by the airport a really nice Bentley passed us and then punched the gas and shot up around us. It had a lot of muscle. Hal wanted me to take a picture as it went by and I think he saw me with the camera and thats when he hit the gas and took off.
We had no glitches with the car at all until we got to a town called Limon, Colorado. We had originally planned to hit Limon and potentially stay the night if our timing was good as we had been advised that was a good place to stop. Since it was still light we decided to push on another hour and the next town where we could spend the night was called Kit Carson. I looked at the map and it was not really that far from Kansas. Kit Carson was a neat little town and I wished we could have stayed for an hour and look around. It had a neat little museum and as I had grown up reading Westerns and American History, I would have liked to see the museum with Kit Carson's belongings. I was really glad we had pushed that extra hour as the time change to Central would be like losing an hour. I was really really glad we did it once we got to the hotel and realized we would have been driving another hour had we not.
The Hotel was a small flat one where all the rooms open to the parking lot. This is pretty typical in small towns. They only charged us $45. It was run by a nice couple and they fed us a muffin and some juice for breakfast. We slept great and got up around 8:00 and off we went. I started out driving.
We didn't have much trouble with the car after that. There were only a few minor sputters as we went down south through Colorado, then through the panhandle of Oklahoma and into Texas. It was almost due south from Kit Carson to Amarillo. We stopped at the welcome to Texas sign and took a couple pictures and off we went. I took a bypass around Amarillo and started heading East toward Dallas. That stretch of road is really really really long. Texas is really big. As we headed East we started encountering thunderstorms and a little rain. The closer we got to Dallas the more it rained. The highway took us through many small towns which seemed to make the time drag on even more. At some point I traded Hal driving but it was starting to get scary with all the rain on the road. We passed a few wrecks, one of which was a really big Fed Ex truck.
It was great when we finally hit the outskirts of Dallas. We had booked a room at the Westin Hotel not far from the airport. We checked in around 8:00 pm I believe. We ordered room service and went to sleep. I don't think any of them had had room service before so it was a treat. In the morning we got up really early and me and Quinn took a shuttle to the airport and got checked in. We said good bye in front of the hotel and Hal was on his own. It was a little weird to drop a kid off and then get on a plane. Its usually the other way around.
This was Quinn's first airplane ride. We ended up sitting all the way in the back of the plane. It was quite an uneventful flight home. We changed planes in Salt Lake and Teresa and the girls were there to pick us up.
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