Day 1 - The Long Drive Made Longer

Our trip started out very nicely. We left home at 11:00 am and were planning on getting to Reno around 6:00 Nevada time. We were making good progress, listening to Harry Potter, and then the Aggie basketball game, snacking, and having a great time. This all changed about 25 miles past Wendover.

It was about 2:15 Utah time when all of the sudden the cruise control turned off and we began to lose speed. There was a weird grinding noise whenever I pressed on the accelerator. Needless to say, we pulled over and opened up the hood. Since I don't know anything about cars, everything looked fine. We checked the oil and that looked fine too. The car was running, despite the funny noise, so we decided after talking to Dad that our best option was to try and make it back to Wendover where we would find a mechanic to look at it. So we continued on until we found an "Authorized vehicles only" turnaround and then snuck in. We were headed the other way, going about 45 miles per hour with our hazard lights on. We got about half way there when the engine died completely and wouldn't restart.

So there we were, stranded in the Nevada wilderness on the side of the road. I called AAA and they sent someone to pick us up and tow the car. They got there an hour later and loaded us up onto their truck. In the meanwhile, we were able to listen to the rest of the Aggie game and decide with Dad that the best thing to do would be to tow it back to Salt Lake, in order to make all of the repairs logistics a lot easier. So after the guy got there and we were loaded onto the tow truck, we headed across the salt flats for the second time. We got to Salt Lake, to a garage that Oscar recommended at about 6:00. We unloaded our stuff from the car and paid the tow truck driver for the 40 miles over the 100 that AAA pays for ($4 per mile, what a joke). After a few minutes Mom and Dad got there with the Avalon and Dad's car, and we loaded our stuff in the Avalon, said thanks and goodbye, and headed across the salt flats for the third time that day. We made good time and didn't have any problems, and finally arrived in Reno at 12:00 Nevada.

We checked into our hotel and finally got to rest after 13 hours of travel.