Hiccups

A month (June) in southern Colorado was barely enough time to see any of it and everything we got to see was amazing. We caught some fish despite runoff being very late, and we saw a number of wild animals including a mountain lion, a moose in our campsite and a porcupine mechanic that tried to help us fix our emissions canister.

The last week of June was an eventful one, that we will talk about for the next decade for sure. It started a long time back with lights on the dash that I decided to ignore. I'm not proud that I ignored them and will never do it again. We were about 10 miles from Carbondale when our car died. Our gas gauge was showing extremely low so I decided to leave my Wife and dog in the car while I rode to town for some gas. I made it back put some gas in the car and that wasn't the issue. Jacquelyn had the idea that maybe our battery was dead so we jumped ourselves using our auxiliary battery in the back. Jacquelyn was playing Frankenstein with the jumper cables in the back seat to get us to Carbondale, where we ended up eating amazing pizza and staying the evening. We got our battery tested and it was dead. We replaced it and headed on our way to Leadville a week prior to meeting some friends before the holiday weekend.

We started our trek to Leadville and all was running smooth until about 15 miles outside when we heard some really nasty noise coming from the engine. We pushed through just trying to get into town to have cell service and a possible solution. Pulling into the closest parking lot we took one look at the engine and our water pump pulley was about to fall off. It looked like a taco'ed bike wheel. Geico got us a 100 mile free to tow back to Denver on a Tuesday. Fixed the water pump by Friday at noon, had to put in a new alternator which killed our battery in the first place, and got back up to Leadville to see some old friends and meet some new friends.

Those weren't even the hiccups. We got back from a trip to Mexico, to see our friends Paul and Jenn get married, and all hiccups broke out. The van started lurching like a 15 year old trying to drive a stick for the first time. Turns out the air flow meter was going or we should say was gone.

Replaced that and the van has been running smooth ever since. Fingers crossed.

And as Rick Wolfgang said, "So, you guys are doing the NAFTA trip", as we move onto Canada.