necron2.0
07-11-2008, 02:59 PM
Day 1 (Wednesday - 07/02/08)
We were going to a family reunion at Transfer Park in Mancos Colorado. To start with, we had not been informed that this was a camp ground – problematic since we have a 10 month old baby. Still, we decided to go anyway, since we had promised we’d show. That was probably our first and biggest mistake.
Added to this, the instructions my wife and I had received from my dad weren’t precisely accurate. My dad’s instructions on how to do things have always been somewhat existential. Instead of saying to go to this road, then go to that road (by name), he usually says things like, “Head north until you see a church. Go further by about a block and then take the first right you see. Go about twenty miles down that road until you see a big rock, then turn left.”
Fortunately, we’re somewhat used to this, so I Google-Earthed the heck out of his instructions prior to leaving. Even so, we still got turned around once, although not by much. We managed to find the camp site just before the sun went down – a first for us.
After settling in, having some dinner, and chatting for awhile, we decided to go to bed. The plan was we’d all sleep in my folks’ RV – that’s me, my wife, our baby and my mom and dad.
At around 11pm, my mom’s cell phone battery started to die, and the phone let us know with an annoying beep. After stumbling around for awhile, my mom managed to find the phone, and shut it off.
Shortly after that, my wife started smacking me because she said I was snoring. I smacked her back, because she was snoring. After playing “whack-a-mole” with each other for awhile, I decided to go sleep in the van. Actually, with the spare blankets Lori had brought (she’d thought ahead) and the inflatable mattress I had brought (I was thinking ahead too) it was quite comfortable. And the stars at night in the mountains are breath taking.
Later, my wife told me that at around 3am in the morning, the trailer’s battery died, and it informed everyone with persistent beep that was louder than my mom’s cell phone. Unfortunately, the design of the trailer neglected to add any way to shut this warning off, so they had to wait until the battery fully died for the noise to stop. This, my wife tells me, took half an hour, with the beep going off precisely every 15 seconds – precisely.
Day 2 (Thursday - 07/03/08)
When I awoke the next morning (in the van) the camp site was overrun by cows. Apparently a rancher had been grazing his heard somewhere close by, and the cows had managed to break down a fence and were roaming at will through the camp site. My uncle estimated the number of cows at 50 head. This made the trek back to the trailer somewhat interesting, as the cows had lain “landmines” all throughout the camp.
My dad checks the trailer’s battery, and discovers it’s nearly bone dry. He fills it with water, and recharges the battery by hooking it up to his truck while it’s running. I’ve dealt with dehydrated batteries before, so I remain skeptical to the success of this operation.
Deciding to avoid the inevitable, I start this night by sleeping in the van.
Day 3 (Friday - 07/04/08)
As I had suspected, the battery is declared truly dead. Fortunately, the battery went entirely dead at something like 10:30pm the previous night, which meant that the remainder of the night everyone slept relatively undisturbed.
Because the pump for the trailer’s water supply is electric, dad and I take the van to a hand-cranked water pump on the park, and fill up two big water jugs. Naturally, I was doing the cranking (my dad is 77 years old, after all).
Later, we decide to drive into Mancos to buy a replacement battery – the camp site’s caretaker has assured us that the filling station in Mancos has batteries like the one we need, and it will be open, even though it’s the Fourth of July. We load the dead battery into the van and head out. Twenty minutes later, Dad and I walk back into camp.
At this point I should point out that Lori and I don’t own a van. We had rented one from Enterprise to make this trip “easier.”
About a mile outside of camp, the van just died. This time, it wasn’t the battery. There was plenty of power to turn the engine over, it just wasn’t starting. I’m thinking maybe the fuel line got fouled, or something similar. There wasn’t any indication of a growing problem. One moment it worked perfectly. The next moment … nothing.
At this point, all my cousins jumped on their ATV’s to come help me haul the van back to the camp. They asked me how far away it was. All I could think to say was, “Oh, walking distance.”
We manage to haul the van back to camp, and pop open the hood. Now, my uncles and cousins all come from either Colorado, New Mexico or Texas. They’re all cattlemen or oil men. In other words – rednecks. I’m sure they could all field-strip an ATV blindfolded and put it back together (which is more than I could do), but none of them had a clue about the spaghetti that’s in these “new-fangled” machines. All I could tell is that the engine wasn’t flooded, because there was no smell of gasoline.
So, later that day, my dad drove me to the top of a mountain (because there’s no cell phone reception in the camp) so I could call Enterprise’s Roadside “Assistance.” I told them where we were and what had happened. They didn’t take down any directions on how to get to us, but assured me they’d have a tow truck out in 75 minutes or less.
Two hours later, we got on our ATV’s and went looking for the tow truck. It didn’t take us long to find him. Actually, he had just arrived in the area, having been dispatched from Durango. Luckily, he just happened to know where Transfer Park was.
The tow truck driver loads up the van and hauls it away. This leaves Lori and I without a vehicle, but that’s no big deal, because my dad has plenty of room to get us to Farmington, NM. From there, we are to pick up a replacement vehicle. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to pick it up until 8am on Monday (or so we are told).
With the van gone, I break out my tent and pitch it. Again, I came prepared.
After that, Lori and I jump on my folk’s ATVs and go for a short trip around the camping area. We get no more than 500 ft outside of camp, when we’re stopped by park rangers. They asked to see our Colorado vehicle registrations. We have no idea what he’s talking about, seeing as my folks are from New Mexico, so they follow us back to our camp site. Apparently, Colorado has passed money sucking legislation that all ATVs operating in Colorado must be registered in Colorado, regardless of where the vehicle was purchased or where the owner lives. That ended our riding for the day, and meant that my dad had to take a trip into town to get the vehicles registered. Naturally, that office was open on the holiday, filled to brimming with bureaucrats smiling lecherously.
Day 4 (Saturday - 07/05/08)
On this day, with our newly registered ATVs, my uncle takes Lori and me on an ATV tour, while my mom watches her granddaughter. All in all, this was a pleasant trip, but I was expecting a short trip around some of the trails in the park, like what they’d been doing up to this point. Instead, he takes us on a four hour tour into the woods. This wouldn’t have been bad, except that I was in a short sleeved shirt, with no sun block. I’d forgotten that UV rays are harsher in the mountains, even with a forest canopy, so we didn’t think to bring any sun protection. I got pretty burnt.
That night at dinner, as I’m tending my burnt arms, grandma helps feed Isabella. Mom asks Lori if Isabella can have beans, to which Lori says yes (Isabella has had beans before, and likes them). What we didn’t know was these were spicy beans.
Later that night, Isabella develops a tummy-ache, and cries for hours off and on all night. Since I’m no longer in a sound-proof van, I can hear her through the trailer wall. It was a pretty rough night.
Day 5 (Sunday - 07/06/08)
This was probably the only relatively uneventful day. We packed up and left the camp. Lori, Isabella and I went with my folks back to Farmington, NM.
Day 6 (Monday - 07/07/08)
Lori, Isabella and I slept peacefully through the night. We got up the next morning and had breakfast.
At 8am, I called the local Enterprise office to get a replacement van (as I’d been instructed to do). The offices weren’t open.
I call Enterprise at 9am, and they said they didn't have a van, but expect one in at 11am.
I call Enterprise at 11am for replacement van, at which time they said they still didn’t have a van, but could put me in a quad-cab truck.
Dad drives Lori and I to Enterprise at 11:30am to get a truck. Because a truck would be an “upgrade,” they stick us in a Dodge Nitro instead. The Nitro is a POS mini-SUV wannabe. When we pick up the Nitro, there is a warning indicator light on in the dashboard. On my car, that same light means that the anti-skid system has been disabled, so we don’t pay it much notice.
By the time Lori and I load up the car, have lunch (because by now it’s time for lunch) and leave Farmington, it is 1:30pm.
Lori drives until we reach Tuba City, at which point we stop for a rest and to have a meal. Big mistake. Tuba City is on the Indian reservation. If you’ve never been on an Indian reservation, here’s a tip – DON’T STOP. If you need food, gas or whatever, get what you need and get the heck out.
We stopped at Sonic (a burger stand). We ordered from one of their picnic style tables outside, because we had our dog with us. After about five minutes, one Indian shows up and started buzzing around us, asking if he can eat our leftovers, or if we’d buy him a burger, or (and this is what he really wanted) if we could give him a couple bucks. Not long after that, two more beggars show up, at least one of which is severely drunk. Now, not only are they buzzing around us, but their beginning to argue with each other about who “was there first.” On top of this, they’re showing a bit more interest in my baby girl than I am comfortable with.
While I keep them distracted, Lori loads all our stuff into the car and locks all the doors except the driver’s side. I then make my way into the car. One of them is persistent, and I nearly have to beat him down with a stick.
From Tuba City, we continued on, stopping briefly at Flagstaff. Just outside of Flagstaff, exactly nine miles from Camp Verdi (I say exactly because that’s what the sign said), the Nitro starts to fish-tail badly. I immediately pull over and discover that the right rear tire is entirely flat. Turns out, that warning light, the one that had been on since Farmington (the one that had been on since before Enterprise leased us the vehicle) was a tire pressure warning, and not an anti-skid disabled warning.
I get out of the car, completely unpack everything we own to get to the spare tire, only to discover that there is no jack of any kind. Likewise, the tire iron is missing.
Once again, we call Enterprise roadside assistance. For what seems like 15 minutes, my wife explains over and over that we are south of Flagstaff, and exactly nine miles north of Camp Verdi, on I-17. We explain what has happened, and that we are in a dangerous situation on the side of the road, at night, with our 10 month old daughter. The dispatcher says she’ll get a truck to us right away. This is at 9:20pm at night.
At exactly 10:40pm, the truck arrives. The driver had only been told that we were somewhere south of Flagstaff, headed south. He had been told we were in a silver car (the Nitro was actually red), and had not been told anything about our situation other than we were on the side of the road. His instructions were to tow us into Camp Verdi. For those of you not familiar with it, there is nothing in Camp Verdi. It's little more than a rest stop with fast food and services stations, none of which are open at 11pm at night.
I explain the problem to the driver. I showed him the empty jack compartment. I told him I could limp it into Phoenix if I could only swap out the tire. After calling dispatch to explain the situation, he got out his tools, got out his jack, and managed to not only get the spare tire off the car (because it normally took a special connector on the tire iron to do it), but changed out the tire for us. My wife called him our knight in shining denim.
Lori, Isabella and I managed to limp it into Phoenix at 3am on Tuesday morning.
We were going to a family reunion at Transfer Park in Mancos Colorado. To start with, we had not been informed that this was a camp ground – problematic since we have a 10 month old baby. Still, we decided to go anyway, since we had promised we’d show. That was probably our first and biggest mistake.
Added to this, the instructions my wife and I had received from my dad weren’t precisely accurate. My dad’s instructions on how to do things have always been somewhat existential. Instead of saying to go to this road, then go to that road (by name), he usually says things like, “Head north until you see a church. Go further by about a block and then take the first right you see. Go about twenty miles down that road until you see a big rock, then turn left.”
Fortunately, we’re somewhat used to this, so I Google-Earthed the heck out of his instructions prior to leaving. Even so, we still got turned around once, although not by much. We managed to find the camp site just before the sun went down – a first for us.
After settling in, having some dinner, and chatting for awhile, we decided to go to bed. The plan was we’d all sleep in my folks’ RV – that’s me, my wife, our baby and my mom and dad.
At around 11pm, my mom’s cell phone battery started to die, and the phone let us know with an annoying beep. After stumbling around for awhile, my mom managed to find the phone, and shut it off.
Shortly after that, my wife started smacking me because she said I was snoring. I smacked her back, because she was snoring. After playing “whack-a-mole” with each other for awhile, I decided to go sleep in the van. Actually, with the spare blankets Lori had brought (she’d thought ahead) and the inflatable mattress I had brought (I was thinking ahead too) it was quite comfortable. And the stars at night in the mountains are breath taking.
Later, my wife told me that at around 3am in the morning, the trailer’s battery died, and it informed everyone with persistent beep that was louder than my mom’s cell phone. Unfortunately, the design of the trailer neglected to add any way to shut this warning off, so they had to wait until the battery fully died for the noise to stop. This, my wife tells me, took half an hour, with the beep going off precisely every 15 seconds – precisely.
Day 2 (Thursday - 07/03/08)
When I awoke the next morning (in the van) the camp site was overrun by cows. Apparently a rancher had been grazing his heard somewhere close by, and the cows had managed to break down a fence and were roaming at will through the camp site. My uncle estimated the number of cows at 50 head. This made the trek back to the trailer somewhat interesting, as the cows had lain “landmines” all throughout the camp.
My dad checks the trailer’s battery, and discovers it’s nearly bone dry. He fills it with water, and recharges the battery by hooking it up to his truck while it’s running. I’ve dealt with dehydrated batteries before, so I remain skeptical to the success of this operation.
Deciding to avoid the inevitable, I start this night by sleeping in the van.
Day 3 (Friday - 07/04/08)
As I had suspected, the battery is declared truly dead. Fortunately, the battery went entirely dead at something like 10:30pm the previous night, which meant that the remainder of the night everyone slept relatively undisturbed.
Because the pump for the trailer’s water supply is electric, dad and I take the van to a hand-cranked water pump on the park, and fill up two big water jugs. Naturally, I was doing the cranking (my dad is 77 years old, after all).
Later, we decide to drive into Mancos to buy a replacement battery – the camp site’s caretaker has assured us that the filling station in Mancos has batteries like the one we need, and it will be open, even though it’s the Fourth of July. We load the dead battery into the van and head out. Twenty minutes later, Dad and I walk back into camp.
At this point I should point out that Lori and I don’t own a van. We had rented one from Enterprise to make this trip “easier.”
About a mile outside of camp, the van just died. This time, it wasn’t the battery. There was plenty of power to turn the engine over, it just wasn’t starting. I’m thinking maybe the fuel line got fouled, or something similar. There wasn’t any indication of a growing problem. One moment it worked perfectly. The next moment … nothing.
At this point, all my cousins jumped on their ATV’s to come help me haul the van back to the camp. They asked me how far away it was. All I could think to say was, “Oh, walking distance.”
We manage to haul the van back to camp, and pop open the hood. Now, my uncles and cousins all come from either Colorado, New Mexico or Texas. They’re all cattlemen or oil men. In other words – rednecks. I’m sure they could all field-strip an ATV blindfolded and put it back together (which is more than I could do), but none of them had a clue about the spaghetti that’s in these “new-fangled” machines. All I could tell is that the engine wasn’t flooded, because there was no smell of gasoline.
So, later that day, my dad drove me to the top of a mountain (because there’s no cell phone reception in the camp) so I could call Enterprise’s Roadside “Assistance.” I told them where we were and what had happened. They didn’t take down any directions on how to get to us, but assured me they’d have a tow truck out in 75 minutes or less.
Two hours later, we got on our ATV’s and went looking for the tow truck. It didn’t take us long to find him. Actually, he had just arrived in the area, having been dispatched from Durango. Luckily, he just happened to know where Transfer Park was.
The tow truck driver loads up the van and hauls it away. This leaves Lori and I without a vehicle, but that’s no big deal, because my dad has plenty of room to get us to Farmington, NM. From there, we are to pick up a replacement vehicle. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to pick it up until 8am on Monday (or so we are told).
With the van gone, I break out my tent and pitch it. Again, I came prepared.
After that, Lori and I jump on my folk’s ATVs and go for a short trip around the camping area. We get no more than 500 ft outside of camp, when we’re stopped by park rangers. They asked to see our Colorado vehicle registrations. We have no idea what he’s talking about, seeing as my folks are from New Mexico, so they follow us back to our camp site. Apparently, Colorado has passed money sucking legislation that all ATVs operating in Colorado must be registered in Colorado, regardless of where the vehicle was purchased or where the owner lives. That ended our riding for the day, and meant that my dad had to take a trip into town to get the vehicles registered. Naturally, that office was open on the holiday, filled to brimming with bureaucrats smiling lecherously.
Day 4 (Saturday - 07/05/08)
On this day, with our newly registered ATVs, my uncle takes Lori and me on an ATV tour, while my mom watches her granddaughter. All in all, this was a pleasant trip, but I was expecting a short trip around some of the trails in the park, like what they’d been doing up to this point. Instead, he takes us on a four hour tour into the woods. This wouldn’t have been bad, except that I was in a short sleeved shirt, with no sun block. I’d forgotten that UV rays are harsher in the mountains, even with a forest canopy, so we didn’t think to bring any sun protection. I got pretty burnt.
That night at dinner, as I’m tending my burnt arms, grandma helps feed Isabella. Mom asks Lori if Isabella can have beans, to which Lori says yes (Isabella has had beans before, and likes them). What we didn’t know was these were spicy beans.
Later that night, Isabella develops a tummy-ache, and cries for hours off and on all night. Since I’m no longer in a sound-proof van, I can hear her through the trailer wall. It was a pretty rough night.
Day 5 (Sunday - 07/06/08)
This was probably the only relatively uneventful day. We packed up and left the camp. Lori, Isabella and I went with my folks back to Farmington, NM.
Day 6 (Monday - 07/07/08)
Lori, Isabella and I slept peacefully through the night. We got up the next morning and had breakfast.
At 8am, I called the local Enterprise office to get a replacement van (as I’d been instructed to do). The offices weren’t open.
I call Enterprise at 9am, and they said they didn't have a van, but expect one in at 11am.
I call Enterprise at 11am for replacement van, at which time they said they still didn’t have a van, but could put me in a quad-cab truck.
Dad drives Lori and I to Enterprise at 11:30am to get a truck. Because a truck would be an “upgrade,” they stick us in a Dodge Nitro instead. The Nitro is a POS mini-SUV wannabe. When we pick up the Nitro, there is a warning indicator light on in the dashboard. On my car, that same light means that the anti-skid system has been disabled, so we don’t pay it much notice.
By the time Lori and I load up the car, have lunch (because by now it’s time for lunch) and leave Farmington, it is 1:30pm.
Lori drives until we reach Tuba City, at which point we stop for a rest and to have a meal. Big mistake. Tuba City is on the Indian reservation. If you’ve never been on an Indian reservation, here’s a tip – DON’T STOP. If you need food, gas or whatever, get what you need and get the heck out.
We stopped at Sonic (a burger stand). We ordered from one of their picnic style tables outside, because we had our dog with us. After about five minutes, one Indian shows up and started buzzing around us, asking if he can eat our leftovers, or if we’d buy him a burger, or (and this is what he really wanted) if we could give him a couple bucks. Not long after that, two more beggars show up, at least one of which is severely drunk. Now, not only are they buzzing around us, but their beginning to argue with each other about who “was there first.” On top of this, they’re showing a bit more interest in my baby girl than I am comfortable with.
While I keep them distracted, Lori loads all our stuff into the car and locks all the doors except the driver’s side. I then make my way into the car. One of them is persistent, and I nearly have to beat him down with a stick.
From Tuba City, we continued on, stopping briefly at Flagstaff. Just outside of Flagstaff, exactly nine miles from Camp Verdi (I say exactly because that’s what the sign said), the Nitro starts to fish-tail badly. I immediately pull over and discover that the right rear tire is entirely flat. Turns out, that warning light, the one that had been on since Farmington (the one that had been on since before Enterprise leased us the vehicle) was a tire pressure warning, and not an anti-skid disabled warning.
I get out of the car, completely unpack everything we own to get to the spare tire, only to discover that there is no jack of any kind. Likewise, the tire iron is missing.
Once again, we call Enterprise roadside assistance. For what seems like 15 minutes, my wife explains over and over that we are south of Flagstaff, and exactly nine miles north of Camp Verdi, on I-17. We explain what has happened, and that we are in a dangerous situation on the side of the road, at night, with our 10 month old daughter. The dispatcher says she’ll get a truck to us right away. This is at 9:20pm at night.
At exactly 10:40pm, the truck arrives. The driver had only been told that we were somewhere south of Flagstaff, headed south. He had been told we were in a silver car (the Nitro was actually red), and had not been told anything about our situation other than we were on the side of the road. His instructions were to tow us into Camp Verdi. For those of you not familiar with it, there is nothing in Camp Verdi. It's little more than a rest stop with fast food and services stations, none of which are open at 11pm at night.
I explain the problem to the driver. I showed him the empty jack compartment. I told him I could limp it into Phoenix if I could only swap out the tire. After calling dispatch to explain the situation, he got out his tools, got out his jack, and managed to not only get the spare tire off the car (because it normally took a special connector on the tire iron to do it), but changed out the tire for us. My wife called him our knight in shining denim.
Lori, Isabella and I managed to limp it into Phoenix at 3am on Tuesday morning.