My girls and I just arrived in Las Vegas after an extended road trip. We set out on Friday with the intentions of driving up to Seattle to pick up some super awesome toys from a friend of ours (Thank you Cheryl!) and leaving Portland on Saturday with the expectation of arriving in Las Vegas on Monday afternoon. We were super organized and planned out stops and rest breaks. For awhile, things went great.
Our first night we stayed in Ashland Or and had a great night at our hotel. We took the girls swimming until their teeth were chattering, but they still didn’t want to leave. Ashland has a large Shakespeare festival every year and our hotel was festooned with Shakespeare costumes and memorabilia.
The next day we drove to Visalia Ca where all of our troubles began. About an hour before our stop I started noticing a rattle in my engine. By the time we stopped for the night it was apparent something was very wrong. The next morning I looked up local repair shops and headed to D S Service Center where it was determined my waterpump was broken. This took a day to fix and added about $700 to our trip, although the people at this mechanic were wonderful!!
The next day (Tuesday) we set out again with a newly fixed and cleaned car hoping to make it to Vegas that day. It was soon determined that we took a wrong turn, well actually, missed a turn. After getting ourselves turned around we set off towards Barstow Ca. Soon a large rock ricocheted off my hood twice and into my windshield.
Palm sized break right at eye level. Rock had already ricocheted twice off my hood before doing this
This added a bit of time to our trip. We finally reached Barstow Ca about 8pm and decided that we would spend one last night on the road instead of making the last 2 1/2 hour drive that night. We finally made it to Las Vegas on Wednesday. Quite an eventful road trip!
