It seemed like a perfect plan as we took off on a drive to Uxbridge to visit Inge and her lovely gardens. Then Winny started to falter. We both tried to ignore the hesitation as the car tried to change gears. It got worse as we approached Missassauga so Meg drove to a Ford dealer for an inspection. Bad news - the transmission was skipping 2nd and 3rd gear and was on its last legs. Oh,oh! Now what? We got two more transmission specialists to check her out...both said she wouldn't make it to Mexico and wouldn't make it back to BC. Yikes! We didn't have any option other than buying another vehicle...we had too much stuff (bound for Mexico) to leave or ship back to BC. After visiting a few car dealerships in Barrie, Meg and I found a Dodge Dakota Quad cab with canopy on Craiglist and headed out to Thornton to check it out. It seemed to fit our wish list, looked in reasonable condition, so we bought it. Little did we know that it is not easy for non-residents to buy, licence and insure a vehicle in Ontario. There seemed to be far too many road blocks on our quest to drive out of Ontario to Mexico. After 3 full days of driving from one insurance agent to another (no one wanted to sell us insurance), to the Motor Vehicle office for an Ontario licence (which we were told was necessary), consultations with an extremely helpful insurance broker and numerous trips to the car lot (they messed up the interim vehicle permit), we were finally able to unload Winny, pack up Rusty (our new truck) and head south.
Time was ticking - we had 10-day interim insurance from ICBC and a 10-day interim plate from Ontario both which started on Friday the 11th. We felt that we could make it down to the Mexican border before the 10-day limit - it would be a rush but it was doable. I had already purchased Mexican insurance (Canadian auto insurance is not valid in Mexico) which I could transfer from Winny to Rusty. So much for our anticipated leisurely drive across the States...we were now into turbo-mode!
We paused for an hour or so in Toronto for a great lunch with 
Meg's sister's, Wilma, then hit the highway for Sarnia, crossed into Michigan and trucked on to East Lansing. The next day we crossed Michigan with a brief stop in Kalamazoo for an oil change, touched a little bit of Indiana - circa Gary, skirted around Chicago, crossed the rest of Illinois into Missouri to rest for the night at our friends' (Rich and Chris) house in St.Louis. Meg and I were awed by the architecture and majestic old brick buildings and houses in St.Louis. It was too bad we were on a tight schedule...we would really have liked to see more of the city. Rich and Chris reassured us that we wouldn't have any problems at the Mexican border with our truck paper so the next morning we continued our road trip to Kearney, MO...just north of Kansas City...for a short stay with our friends, Nick and Roger. Kearney is a quaint little town...a tad hot and humid, while we were there, but cute and cozy.Meg was unsettled about our drive south - all the car trouble and licensing difficulties did not sit well with her. But we had obligations in Cuyutlan, things to do, stuff to deliver and plane tickets for our flight home. Unfortunately we had no time to linger in Kearney with Nick and Roger so continued on to Tempe to regroup and get across the border.
Another long day (Friday)- across Kansas and through to Clinton, Oklahoma on the western pan-handle. Although we were driving to get from Point A to Point B there was never any area that was not worth the drive. We were quite taken with the beauty of the countryside, rolling fields of crops, ranches, picturesque towns. The temperatures definitely started to creep up the scale as we drove further south. It was hot and humid in Missouri and kept getting hotter into Kansas and Oklahoma where the thermometer was steady at 100F throughout the day. 
On Saturday we left Clinton, drove through the top of Texas via Amarillo, into New Mexico via Albuquerque and into Arizona to Flagstaff. As we approached Flagstaff we noticed big clouds of smoke which I thought was a grass fire...turning on the radio we found it was a huge forest fire threatening the eastern section of the city. People were on alert to evacuate. We made it into town, stopped for gas and Rusty refused to start up. What's happening to us? A long call to AAA produced a helpful mechanic who happily checked out the truck, ran a diagnostics check and replaced the battery. Meg found a mobile mechanic who replaced the alternator and we were good to go. Unfortunately it was too late to continue into Tempe so we had to bunk in at a motel which had inflated the room rate due to the influx of the people evacuating their homes. Nice...>:0( !!Next morning we were up early and drove 2 blocks before bells and lights started to ding and light up on the dashboard. The alternator was kaput. We crept into a Midas shop and waited for it to open. Four hours later, after a new alternator, relay gizmo, many more $$s, stress and anguish, we were on our way to Tempe.
At this point Meg and I decided that we had encountered too many obstacles on this journey. Our trip to Mexico was not the seamless, stress-free trip that we had planned. Then there were the natural disasters and foul weather systems that we had thankfully avoided, sometimes by mere hours - flooding in southern Saskatchewan, golfball-sized hail in North Dakota and Wisconsin, 36 tornadoes one a day in Minnesota, the tornado that ripped through Midland, Ontario a week after we were there, the earthquake in Ontario, severe thunderstorms around Chicago, St. Louis & Kansas City, more flooding in Oklahoma, and the 10,000 acre wild fire in Flagstaff and a potential hurricane SW of Manzanillo. Hmmm...is this Mother Nature's way of getting us to rethink things?
1 comment:
You got some great shots while on
the road...
Good idea to head home... that storm
is still threatening to hit
Mexico.
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