Trip from HELL

We were headed over to eastern Washington to go do a walk through. We had never seen the place before but had to go sign papers. It started off bad. We got about 1 hour from our house when the truck just stopped working on the pass. There was absolutely no power steering and the truck wouldn't start. We were in the middle of the road. We got it pulled over and was ready to call AAA. I called and the truck started, we thought that was really weird since we have never had a problem with that truck. We kept on going since we had 7 more hours to our destination. We got right outside Madras and the truck wouldn't go over 15 miles an hour in a 55.  We heard  something blow up. so we pulled over and couldn't find what it was. I thought we blew a tire, but non of the tires looked deflated. We were in the middle of no where and we were trying to get to the next town to see if there was mechanic. We made it to Shaniko, which if you have ever been there before, there is nothing! It was around lunch time and the kids were hungry and cranky! I went to the post office and asked if there was someone who worked on diesel trucks. She went outside and pointed to the house over yonder, and said there is a guy who is working on that guys roof and he might know. So I walked over to that guys house and knocked on the door, the guy so was old and couldn't' even talk. I did get out of him that the guy is in surgery today and wouldn't be able to help. Awesome! He walked me over to this older ladies house for a phone number and I got it and went back over to the truck. It took me over an hour to get this phone number, so Brandyn already called and got a number for a man to come rescue us. The guy was over an hour and a half away so we went to go find something to eat.

The only place to eat was the general store! Everything was frozen and had to be microwaved and the kids weren't having it. They only took money no debit cards. Good thing I found 5 dollars in change, or we would be in trouble. We walked around to waste time and keep the kids occupied.  finally a man arrived in his yellow truck. He charged us 225.00 just to come with a $10.00 part. It was a metal circle that holds the turbo on. He got it fixed and off we went. We made it about 1/2 mile and it blew off again. Good thing the guy was behind us to fix it again. We went about another 1/2 mile and it blew again. The guy was like I think its the turbo. He got on the phone with AAA and they would only tow us 3 miles and they don't tow a trailer. Awesome! The guy called his tow truck which was an hour and a half away. The guy was really nice and said he would tow our trailer on the back of his truck and park it at his place in MORO. We were hoping he was an honest person, but we had no other choices at this point. When the tow truck arrived we owed another 200.00 in towing fees. But the tow truck didn't have enough room for all of us, so Brandyn had to wait behind on the side of the road and wait for my brother to rescue him. (which was another 45 minutes) in waiting. I got in the tow truck with the screaming kids with our truck on the back and went back to Madras to the Ford dealer ship. We arrived right before the place shut down for the night. I had 4 kids with their car seats and had no idea what to do. They offered me and the kids as ride to my brothers house. We left our house in McKenzie bridge at 8:00am and was suppose to take 2 hours took 9 hours! We stayed at my brothers house until we got a phone call saying it was the turbo and it would cost us $2,000.00. We had No choice and did that. We got our car back the next night and we left around 6:00pm. We made it to Dixie which we still had 1.5 hours left till we got to Brandyn's moms house to drop off our trailer. The truck stopped on us again and wouldn't go above 25 miles an hour. We made it around 1:00am and had to get up take the truck into Lewiston and we still had to be in Walla Walla by 9:00am to do a walk through. On our way to Walla Walla we got a phone call from the Ford dealer ship in Lewiston and they said in order to check the turbo we just had put in we had to fix the cylinders. Which costs another 1,000 plus. lets just say we weren't happy. After the walk through we went back to Brandyn's moms house and was hoping the truck wouldn't be finished because the kids had school on Monday and Brandyn had work. It was done at the last minute Saturday and we went home Sunday. We took the truck into our mechanic in Eugene Oregon and he said we didn't need a new turbo...WHAT!!! we just spent thousands of dollars and it wasn't necessary!

New Place

 Walla Walla

 Grandma's house

cousins