Wow! Who’d have thought? We had a banner day. And maybe not the banners that we had hoped for, but they were still waving.
Our goal was to leave our stationary home around 9:00 a.m. and we pulled out at quarter after. That is impressive, my friends. With a prayer and a silent cheer, we were off.
The first event was crossing the border. Not that it was a challenge, but they do like to be stern. Their biggest concern seemed to be what we were doing with the kids out of school. Perhaps they haven’t encountered many homeschoolers?
The second event was at the Target parking lot in Fargo. The RV was making a noise that can only be described as a ridiculously loud wobble. We stopped, prayed and Eric did something something and then it was fine.
The third event. Still in Fargo. Oh the third. It was the sign of greater things to come. We went to the gas station to get some drinks and when we came back to the recreational vehicle, the battery was dead. As a door nail (or snorkel, or any other inanimate objects, since a door nail doesn’t seem to be anymore dead than any of those other things). We prayed while Eric as thankfully able to buy a pair of cables at the gas station store (only marked up a few hundred percentages from other stores), and had a lovely young “Hot Rod” type guy give us a boost with his sweet ride. Although clearly he was jealous of ours…..
The fourth and final - the killer. Heading east on I94, we started getting some weird clonking and bonking noises. We pulled over to see what was the matter (by we, I mean Eric) but nothing seemed amiss. The nasty noises continued, however, and as soon as we came to an exit, we took the ramp to pull into a gas station. Only we didn’t get that far. We early made it to the top of the exit ramp, dying a slow death. We prayed again while Eric tried to flag down help. Thankfully some nice woman stopped to try to help us out. We tried a boost but there was not even a hint of life. Then a nice man stopped. He couldn’t do much other than give us numbers to a towing/repair place.
We magically appeared several yards down the road in the parking lot of said gas station (a Tesoro, in case you are wondering…. on the corner of interstate 94 and highway 59) and the men set to work….. to accomplish….. nothing. In the meantime, we did some frolicking: ditch frolicking, teepee frolicking, trying to get wifi frolicking (Mia’s head is the best conductor - she has magical brains).
Spending the night in your RV in the parking lot of a Tesoro gas station isn’t all that bad. Extremely cold at night, but really not that bad. Even without having any power whatsoever. Develops your character.
By 8:30 the next morning we were being towed to a auto body shop with lovely, kind auto body mechanic type people. They had a van we could use so we hit the road to discover the delights of Fergus Falls. Cafe 116 provided breakfast and free wifi. A 10 x 25 foot otter provided entertainment, great paths and bikes provided exercise for muscles in need. It was really quite a fantastic morning. By lunch we had the alternator in for repairs and the two dead batteries taken out. After lunch at Subway and a little more free wifi (parked outside of Cafe 116), we were back to the shop and in just a little while and several hundred dollars later, back on the road. By three o’clock we were on our way.
The event robbed us of time with our friends in Sartell and set back our very loose schedule a day but it gained us some great memories.
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