Ok, the plan was to drive up through Wyoming, stop in Casper for lunch and 2 museums. One had a whole Wholly Mammoth and another was about all the settlers out west. Our kids really like learning and often have a lot of questions, so we knew it would be a big hit. Our first day had the most driving, so the museums were a way to break that up and Jason had gotten Dane and Eve excited about the wholly mammoth. Then in the afternoon we would drive to our hotel in Billings Montana.
But about 20 minutes away from our home the car lost power, it couldn't go above 20 miles per hour. We ended up driving it back to our friends house to see what our options were. Because it was going so slow it took us almost an hour to drive to his house. During that hour he called the dealership and told him they couldn't look at it for a couple of days. As we pulled into their house we knew we had hard decisions to make.
I don’t want to go into all of the details and intricacies of the story. We couldn’t put the trip off for a few days because of the nature of the road trip and reservations that had been made. Putting it off a day or two with set everything off. Our choices quickly became: repack everything and start over in the minivan or rent the last 12 passenger van in all of Colorado. It was an hour away and it would’ve been $3800. It was also a huge downgrade in quality. Through some divine intervention in the moment it was needed, brother Hatch noticed a cap that was loose. Could that be all it was? It felt to good to hope for, but we had asked for a miracle. It still took almost an hour and a half from discovering the loose cap until we were comfortable resuming our trip. We had a mechanic look and Dave Hatch's blessing to take the car but it wasn’t until Jason and I went into a room, knelt down on our knees, and Jason offering a prayer that we both knew that we could move forward in faith with this car.
We also stopped for dinner at Sonic. It was a wild ride. We waited for our food for almost an hour and our order was wrong and pretty yucky and we were charged wrong. We were so tired and it was so late and we were pretty beaten down that we didn’t really care. But Jason and I had been noticing our teens inability to face uncomfortable situations. So we tried to take this opportunity, and others we would find ourselves in on the vacation, to model how to be kind, but also not be taken advantage of.
Once we got to the hotel Jason went right in and went to bed. We all got to sleep in the car and he did all the driving. As mentioned it was 2 am and we had to up at 6 am to make it 2 hours down the road to a cave tour reservation by 8:30 am. So Jason went to bed and I unpacked and got the kids settled. It was rough and they didn't have all the blankets and pillows they said they would have, but by 3 am everyone was asleep. The teenagers were impeccable. They happily slept on floors with little bedding. No one seemed to complain the whole trip and were happy and grateful at all times. I went to bed in a hotel in Billings, Montana with my husband by my side and 6 kids surrounding us with a full heart.
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