I can’t say I slept great that night because of the small seed of worry about being without the truck more than 2,000 miles from home. Not only was it our transportation but also our home away from home: we slept in it and, of course, had all our stuff in the truck.
Truck loaded onto the tow truck
The next morning I got a call about 9:30 that the shop at which I had my truck dropped off could not do the repair. I called a few other shops around town with no luck.
Frustrated, I called my mechanic back in Birmingham and asked him, only half jesting, how much he’d charge for me to fly him out to do the repair. Heath, my mechanic, was blown away by the fact that no one could do the repair. He said he had done one on the side of the road with only a hammer. We talked a bit more about what to expect as far as price and time to complete and we hung up. And sadly no, he did not agree to fly out and fix the truck.
With a bit more confidence that this might not be such a big deal to get the truck repaired, I called a few more shops and finally found one who would do it. BUT he said it would take a few days to get the part in from Salt Lake City. He said I needed to get the truck over to him pretty quickly so he could verify the size of the part and get it ordered before the cut off time. So back on the phone to schedule a tow truck, since Heath said do not drive the truck to the other shop even though it was only a mile away.
Finally, we got the truck moved, the piece measured and ordered. It was mid-day Friday by this time and the truck was promised to be ready mid-day Monday, so a whole weekend to spend in Moab, not a bad place to be stuck other than $250/night for the motel. But I didn’t want to sit around town all weekend with some of the most beautiful places in the world just an hour or two away. We needed some wheels. Preferably, something we could go offroad with. Time to call around town yet again.
Jeep rentals were running $250/day plus insurance so that was a no-go. Several rental agencies did not even have cars available since it was the weekend. I got back with the original shop and even though they wouldn’t fix the truck they would rent me a car, and for just $50/day. Done! That was the best deal yet.
The owner came and picked us up at the motel, we did the paperwork and we were off. We emptied everything from the truck we thought we might need and took it back to the motel.
Goblin Valley State Park, Utah
We had a long weekend in town so we discussed the best places to go for photos since that’s what we do: take photos. After talking and looking at the map and trying to remember how many miles we got on the rental per day we settled on Goblin State Park, about 2 hours away.
Some of you may remember the movie Galaxy Quest starring Tim Allen in 1999 that was filmed, in part, at this park. I remember watching the movie, and honestly, the only thing I remember was the scenery, it always stuck with me.