Santa… Tucumcari… Amarillo

Yesterday I said I’m sure during this eight-week journey Jordan and I would have our doubts about the whole endeavor. That day was today after we spent seven hours on the side of the road in Tucumcari, New Mexico. If you haven’t heard about Tucumcari before, it looks like this. If I was scouting to film in a location described as “the middle of nowhere” I would use this exact location.

At about 10:30 mountain time Jordan heard a pop on the truck and within the minute notifications of low coolant and a hot transmission were flashing. We immediately pulled over. I knew it was bad, but I’m glad at that moment I didn’t know how bad it actually was.

We had a local service come out to take a look. We put two gallons of coolant in the truck, and when Jordan turned it over the truck did not sound good. I know zero about diesel engines and I could tell it didn’t sound good, but when I looked at the mechanics face I received confirmation that we were in a bad spot (in so many more ways than one.)

While there is no great time to break down on the side of the road, I would argue a Sunday in the middle of nowhere is maybe the worst time and place. Mechanics aren’t open and tow truck drivers aren’t anxious to drive to Tucumcari to pick up a Chevy truck, a 36 foot travel trailer, 2 adults, 2 children and a small dog. I will save you the boring details of the dozens of calls that were made (thank goodness for those two little bars of cell service!), but at about 5:30 pm MT (a full seven hours after we stopped), Angelo showed up to rescue us. He towed all of us, and both vehicles back to Amarillo – the place we started this morning.

The kids handled this diversion well. I was surprised by how unfazed they were by the whole ordeal. About hour three they started asking what our plan was and by hour six Hudson was seriously doubting our ability to get us out of the situation. He wasn’t the only one.

The truck is at a dealership. We are in an RV park. We are tired. Frustrated. Discouraged. This is the part where I feel like I should say something positive and explain how we will persevere, but man, I’m exhausted and we are just going to sit in the fact that today was terrible.

We have a plan for what comes next, but so little has gone to plan at this point that I’m taking it 10 minutes at a time. This has definitely shaped up to be an adventure.

Until next time…

Sarah