Today we started our trip back south and we supposed to get to Casper, WY around mid afternoon after about a 4 ½ hour drive. It was a beautiful day, if a little windy, and the drive was lovely, at least till we were about 25 miles east of Casper. At that point, while driving about 60 along the freeway, something popped under the bonnet and the truck lost all her power. Mike managed to drive us of the next exit (thankfully there were no hills between it and us), and pulled off tot he side of the road. He looked under the hood but didn’t see anything to fix so he called the recovery people. After explaining what had happened the lady decided that it was best to send a tow truck to take us to the Ford dealership in Casper rather than getting a mechanic out to us. She promised he’d be there within an hour and he was, and then he took at least another hour to get us hooked up to his tow truck. The hooking up part wasn’t really the problem but he had to remove the drive shaft (???) and that took a while and a lot of lying on the floor under the truck.





The driver had intended to take the surface roads to get us to Casper and the wind was so bad he didn’t want to get on the freeway, but he couldn’t make the turn while towing the truck and the trailer so on the freeway we got. As it turned out the wind wasn’t really the problem, the problem was his truck wasn’t sure she was powerful enough to tow 20,000 of weight all the way to the Ford garage. It was not the most fun 30 miles I’ve ever driven, the tow truck was struggling, and the driver was using only one hand to steer and change gear while talking on the phone, but we got there eventually. Then the next obstacle was for the tow truck driver to get the trailer into the secure parking lot behind the dealership so we could leave it there for the night. It was a bit hairy but he got it in place and unhooked the truck. As it was close to closing time by the time we got to Ford they can’t start working on it till tomorrow so we had to unhook it from the trailer and leave them both in the lot. According to Mike the truck seemed fine when it didn’t have to tow the trailer but that doesn’t really do us any good for the rest of our trip.
The Ford shuttle took us to the Super 8 across the street, we are going to get Pizza Hut for dinner, and hopefully tomorrow will be a better day. Actually today could have been worse but both Mike and I were quite calm about the whole ordeal, he didn’t shout and I didn’t cry, it’s a miracle!

Mike: That was a hair-raising drive! Definitely an "E" ticket!