Between starting delays, unplanned stops, and slow going, we didn't make it up to the Rexburg area nearly as early in the day as we were originally thinking. Which was fine, it just meant that instead of lollygagging around Rexburg for a bit, we rallied all of the troops and made the drive straight to Humphrey (about an hour north of Rexburg--right near the Montana border).
Humphrey may have been a small town when my grandma lived there 70ish years ago, but it is now all but extinct. We spent some time exploring what is left of the old schoolhouse where my great-grandma used to be a teacher. It was fun to walk around and listen to my grandma and her sister reminisce.
After we were done with the schoolhouse, the plan was to walk the same route my grandma would walk many days to visit friends. They would make the hike for play time and to help watch over younger children. The only trouble was that it had been 70 years since anyone had walked this route. Not to mention there were plenty of new barbed wire fences along our path.
We wandered around the hills for about an hour before deciding it was time to cut our loses, find the highway, and walk back to the schoolhouse. While it wasn't exactly according to plan, we still had a great time and made it back to the schoolhouse safe and sound. But the adventures weren't over yet.
Jason and I loaded up in our little Mazda 6 with my great aunt and uncle to take them to find their pickup that was waiting for us at the end we never reached. To get there, we had to drive on an old dirt road, through an underpass. With all of the wet weather lately, the underpass was a muddy mess. We plowed through and dropped off our passengers and then made the attempt to get back to the rest of our clan. Only our car got stuck in the mud. Deep in the mud. Our front right tire was completely buried and Jason was quickly up to his calves in mud.
Thankfully, we weren't stuck there alone without cell phone service. We called my parents who gathered a crew of guys to help push us out. We got out of the underpass but were concerned with a grinding noise that was present as we drove.
We cleaned out the tire as best we could and babied it as we drove to the next town where we were hoping to find a car wash. Only since we were still in northern Idaho, there was no car wash to be found. Jason banished me to my parents' car (in case the wheel decided to collapse) and we pushed on to Rexburg where we went out to dinner.
After dinner, Jason took off to wash the car down good and proper and try to figure out what our plan would be since we were nervous about driving all the way back home with a grinding noise coming from our tire. He washed it down good and proper, but it didn't help at all. He was driving to the hotel with his hazard lights on when a police officer pulled up alongside him and asked if everything was okay. He ended up getting a police escort to the hotel.
This is when we started to realize that we may be staying in Rexburg longer than planned. It was too late to do anything that night. The next day was Sunday and every tire shop in Rexburg would be closed. The day after that was Memorial Day and every tire shop in Rexburg would be closed. We called the Primary president to get a sub for our class since it was obvious we weren't making it back to AF by 1.
We got up the next morning and my dad and Jason decided to go take the tire off themselves and see if they could see anything wrong. It turns out that a small rock had gotten jammed up by the brakes and would grind as we drove. They got the rock out and the car was good to go again.
Since we weren't making it back to our Primary class, we opted to stay with my family a little longer. We went to the Annis cemetery to pay our respects to family members buried there and then stopped at Texas Roadhouse for a group lunch before heading home. We made it back safe and sound with stories to tell and still had a wonderful time making memories with family.
1 comment:
What an adventure! Glad your car was a "fix-it-yourself" type repair.
Post a Comment