August 31st – September 3rd • Alternator Altercations
We started our journey back home by leaving Las Vegas as soon as our slow moving bodies would let us. At this point, we didn’t know we had covid but we did know that Kevin and I weren’t feeling 100%. Our goal at this time was to just get us back home safe and sound. We knew we would have a few long days ahead of us to get back in any good amount of time. The plan was to get to Grand Junction, CO that night. We booked our hotel and started the journey which should have only been an 8-hour drive. We only stopped a few times for fuel and food and were completely exhausted but were only 30 minutes away from Grand Junction.
That is when our alternator altercations began, around 11 pm, we thought we smelled something funny or burning. Kevin pulled over and we checked everything and it all seemed ok, nothing was overheating or anything. We were coming up on an approach so started pulling over to the side when we really smelled something burning and heard a bang at this point we had already stopped. Smoke had started to pour into the toterhome through the vents. We got out and checked under the hood and the alternator was literally on fire and there were hoses undone and fluid spilling everywhere. We knew at this point that we wouldn’t be getting home or even to our hotel with the toterhome. Since we were 30 minutes from the city and had 6 people in our toterhome, we had to call a tow truck for the toterhome and a taxi for us to get to our hotel. After many phone calls we figured it all out, the tow truck and taxi were on their way. Dealing with a vehicle on fire is hard in it itself but being sick just added to the headache of it all. We really just wanted to be sleeping but had to deal with everything first. Not sure how it happened but the taxi and tow truck ended up showing up at the same time, which was perfect. The kids and I went with the taxi to our hotel and Kevin went with the tow truck to make sure the toterhome got to where it needed to be for the night. We ended up getting settled and in bed by 2 am and at this point didn’t even know how we would be getting all the way home.
The next morning we woke up feeling even worse than we did the day before but didn’t have a choice and had to figure out how we would be getting home. The insurance said they would rent us a car but of course, there is a car shortage so if we rented a car in Colorado we would have to bring it back there since rental companies don’t let you go one way right now. At this point, we knew we needed to get home somehow so Kevin started looking to buy something to get us home. He found a 2004 Toyota Sienna and the owners were willing to bring it to our hotel to show it to us. We looked at it and asked them if they felt it was safe for us to drive all the way home as we still had 12 hours to get home. They felt so bad for us they took the van to get an oil change and checked to make sure it was good to go. We got everything all settled and ready to leave the next morning. Everyone went to bed early that night as we were all sick by this point.
The next morning we loaded everything that was in our toterhome into the minivan or strapped it on top of it then headed off! We didn’t really want to drive a full 12 hours that day since we were all sick but we also just wanted to get home and to bed. This would be the first night we spent in our new home in Creston, IA which I told you about in a previous post here. The only thing was we hadn’t even moved in yet so we had no beds or anything yet. We got to the house late that night and all went inside to get showered and ready for bed, then we headed to our camper to sleep for the night.
At this point, we knew we had Covid and didn’t want to be in contact with anyone but we needed to figure out beds and food. We were able to order groceries online locally and a friend of mine that lives in Des Moines picked up bedding and the things we needed and brought them to our house. The second night we were actually able to sleep in our new house thank you to Missy for bringing us beds. It was still a rough go getting healthy but at least we had somewhere to sleep and get better. We spent the first 2 weeks in Creston, IA quarantined in our house. We are so blessed to have been on an acreage as we could go outside a little every day for some fresh air.
