The day started bad and got progressively worse.
It started at 2am when I got up to go to the loo. I stepped over Mike in bed, did my thing no problem. But when I stepped back over him, I misplaced my hand and went crashing down on my arm. It was pretty painful and still is.
In the morning we headed to Moab to fill up with water and dump our tank before venturing into the wilderness. It was here I had my first run in with a Trump supporter. We got chatting while we waited for him to fill up with water. It started innocently enough, chatting about our plans etc, where we were from etc. He was from Texas. I said how we wanted to go to Alaska but the weather up north was bad.
He then said the weather was all over the place and proceeded to blame the current government for chemtrails which were causing it. he said once Trump gets back in, things will go back to normal and he’ll head to Alaska next year. He then started going on about crazy eco people and their demonic something or other. It was frikking weird, so I laughed thinking he must be joking, but I don’t think he was. I climbed back in the car and kept my distance. Weirdo.
Today, as we were leaving Moab, up a hill our car lost all power. No power steering, limited brakes, it was pretty scary on a main road. Mike tried to restart the car and it started no problem. Mike thought it would be ok to continue but I said we should go back to Moab and get it seen to, not wanting to head further into the wilderness.
We turned around and it cut out again. We rang a local Mobile mechanic and he said to try driving it back to Moab and he’d take a look at it. So we made it back to Moab no problem, and parked in a carpark. We tried ringing him and left a message with him, but it seemed like he was ghosting us.
We tried a couple of garages. One said bring it in Monday, another said a two week wait
Mike pulled the dog box off and checked the obvious things like air filter but all seemed fine.
We had some lunch at a cafe while we decided what to do. I tried the mobile mechanic again but he’s clearly a prick.
I tried another garage and they said to bring it in at 3.30pm. So we did. It was a Mexican run garage and they didn’t speak good English. A mechanic came out and told us to wait in the office. Mike tried to explain the problem but he repeated to wait in the office.
He then took off out of the driveway and up the road with our home. We got worried when 20 mins later he had not come back. I asked the girl on reception if she knew where he was. She tried calling him but he’d left his phone behind. She then headed out herself to find him.
30 mins later we are fretting and pacing, wondering what had happened to our home. Then finally he arrived back and we both breathed a sigh of relief. Turned out he had broken down and didn’t know about the isolator switch.
Turns out it was an electrical problem. The wiring Mike had done to fix the problem last year had come undone, and the switch was broken.
They fixed some of the wiring leaving Mike to fix the switch. Were were relieved but also a bit pissed off we didn’t diagnosed this simple problem ourselves and were fretting about how much it might cost.
It came to a grand total of $36!
We then went to the car parts shop, Mike bought a new switch and wired it in. By this time it was late so we had to find somewhere to stay. All the camps fill up quickly, but we snagged the last spot in the same camp from the previous night.
.