by Diana McCollum
May of 2018 my husband packed up the utility trailer with equipment for helping his daughter and her family build a house. At least the plan was he would supervise and sleep in the 1993 chevy van that was pulling the trailer. When he was done packing the trailer it was so full he had to use tarps and rope to keep everything contained.
He was so excited!
I would follow him in our Toyota. We would stay in Shasta City for a few days and see some sites together. Maybe fish, hike and drive around to McCloud and look at the water falls. Then we would part ways in Chico him heading to Nevada City, CA and me heading to Paradise to visit family. We should have been to Shasta City in 4 1/2 hours.
Driving up the grade to Weed, CA our van lost the driveshaft and the engine fell out.
The good news I was far enough back that the driveshaft bounced once on the road, the Toyota ran over it, (no damage) and shaft went onto the shoulder 1/4 mile back down the hill. Also, good that I was behind him and not someone else.
We sat on the side of the road for 3 hrs waiting for Triple A towing to come save us. The first guy they sent said he could tow the van but not the trailer, so he took the van 60 miles to Redding,CA to the car dealer's parking lot, instead of 10 miles to Weed, CA.
We waited another 2 hrs for another towing service to come. He said there was no reason the first guy couldn't have towed the trailer, lazy he said. This fellow took us to Weed, CA where we rented a U-Haul and towed our trailer to Shasta City. During this time I had canceled the reservations thinking we wouldn't make it to Shasta City. And we showed up after all, and the room was already rented.
Good news, a cheaper hotel down the road had room for us.
Mind you the van was full of things my husband would need for his summer stay with his daughter. Plus, more equipment he was giving to them. Next day, we drove to Redding unloaded the van in the pouring rain and put everything in the U-Haul.
Good news, we found a good hotel in Redding, at a good price and found a wonderful Thai restaurant. We counted our blessings that no one was hurt when the driveshaft came off. The van was sold for scrape.
Husband's trip went from bad to worse. The U-Haul could not make it up the steep dirt road. Daughter's husband had to come down the mountain 1 1/2 hrs and load everything from the U-Haul to his truck bed.
Did I mention Hubby was planning on the Van being his home away from home? the van had a decent bed in it but that was all. Daughter and Husband were living in a tent and had a well, but one had to haul the water to use. Bathroom was a slapped together outhouse.
There was a dilapidated 10' travel trailer they said my husband could stay in. No electricity, no running water, lots of mosquitos an old, old futon, and uneven rough ground. Husband has severe back problems so walking around was hard. He stayed three days and couldn't take any more. He called a friend to pick him up and he rented another U-Haul to pull the utility trailer home.
The good news he spent two days with his good friend in Sacramento.Meanwhile, I had a great rest of the vacation. Visited all three of my children and their families. I got to swim in my son's new pool.
I felt really sorry for my husband that his plans were dashed. His daughter had misrepresented how far along they were on starting house and what the living conditions were like.
One week of my vacation was helping my daughter after her knee surgery. My favorite memory of that was sitting with her in her king size bed, eating hot apple pie and ice cream and watching "The Greatest Showman" on TV.
Good news, husband knows where daughter is living. He says he'll never go back. Too isolated up in the Sierra Mts, through 3 locked gates.
This ended up being the most expensive vacation with the loss of our van, and all the U-Haul rentals, the biggest being $1,100 dollars from Sacramento up to Bend, OR.
Have you had a disastrous vacation?
8 comments:
We had a crazy, adventurous and temporarily disastrous vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota when our boys were twelve and sixteen. We planned a seven mile backpack hike through French Creek Gorge, camping at the opposite end, and hiking back the next day. The hike involves crossing an ankle-deep stream seven times using logs and stones. Unfortunately, they'd had an exceedingly wet Spring that year. The stream was 20 feet across and several feet of deep, freezing, rushing water!
We ended up camping near the far end of the gorge where the walls narrowed to the point there was no place to go without a raft. We loaned our tent to a couple with a sixteen-year old daughter and a little dog.They had planned on a picnic, not a night our where the temperature drops into the forties even in summer. We gave them extra clothes to help them stay warm and shared our food.
The next day we headed back. I got sick from the heat and passed out in a patch of poison ivy. We managed to safely deal with a rattlesnake on the trail and a persistent bull bison. All in all, we were very lucky we were all okay in the end. Except for my reaction to the poison ivy, which lasted two months.
What a crazy trip you had, Sarah! But some good came out of it. You helped fellow hikers out and passed a nice evening with them? Thanks for commenting.
What an ordeal for you and your hubby! I don't have anything quit as horrible as you or Sarah's vacation. We, hubby and I, took his cousin and her husband from The Netherlands on a trip from Central Oregon to Reno, Disneyland, Las Vegas, Grand CAnyon, Yellowstone, through Montana down through Wallowa County and back to Central Oregon in ten days. It went well until hubby decided rather than get a motel between Grand Canyon and Utah we'd camp. We brought a tent and sleeping bags but no mattress or pads. His cousin and her husband purchased rolled up mats at one store, but hubby said we didn't need any. The park he picked to camp at was solid rock. We had to use the spare tire and tire chains to hold the tent down because there was no way to pound stakes into the ground. The ground was HARD! I tossed and turned and finally got up towards morning and slept in the care. But that day I was one cranky woman until I slept on the way to the Bryce Canyon. We called that Flintstone campground because of the curved windbreaks that look like ribs from dinosaurs.
Wow, what a story! Thank goodness no one was hurt when the van fell apart, but it was a tough time for your husband. I'm glad to say I don't have anything that dramatic to share. There was one trip in our bus when we couldn't get the temperature above shivering, even with sleeping bags and a comforter we found the side of the road--lots of cold nights until we drove into warmer territory.
Great story Diana. I can't say I have ever had a bad vacation. Usually they are long enough.
Hard ground in a sleeping bag would be awful , Paty! The worse camping experience for me was when we were in a pup tent next ten feet from a waterfall. It was so noisy I couldn't get to sleep. My husband slept like a baby!
Lynn, that would have been a chilly night for sure! and you were in a bus, OMG!
Thanks for stopping by anonymous.
Good heavens, Diana! I'd have been tempted to cancel everything after the engine fell out, LOL. That must have been harrowing. Particularly with all the equipment and tools involved - what a headache! I'm happy to say I've never experienced anything quite so disastrous. I do recall one back-country camping expedition - I'd just fried a pound of bacon (two teenage boys required such provisioning, hehe) on a little one-burner backpacking stove, refilled the gas tank so as to scramble the eggs, lit the stove and was encountered with a blowtorch. I should have let the stove cool a bit. Luckily we were able to kick the inferno onto a rocky beach and away from anything flammable. Unfortunately the stove was toast and so the cooking for the remainder of the trip had to be done on the campfire - frowned upon in this particular park because of the pollution and the using of limited resources. From then on I took pre-cooked bacon that just needed to be warmed.
OMG, Luanna!
The stove could have exploded and hurt someone! I'd say that was pretty disastrous ! Thanks for commenting.
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