Jeep

When we started this trip, we had a lot to figure out in a short amount of time. Task number one was finding an RV. We also had to deal with the sale of our house and the matter of what to do with everything we owned (some in the RV, some in storage, and most given away).

Ultimately, we didn't have time to deal with our secondary vehicle, a Honda Odyssey minivan. We knew we couldn't flat tow it (because it had no "true neutral"), and we didn't want to deal with a dolly (which gets the drive wheels off of the ground). We decided to use it as a chase vehicle. I'd drive the RV and Julie would drive the van. It wasn't ideal given that we would need to double-pay for fuel, but it did give Julie some quiet time!

It worked well enough... for a few weeks. It quickly became apparent that the van wasn't up to the task. It had a lot of miles, but it was a Honda, and it was running well at the start, so we figured it would be fine. We were wrong.

Our largest expense over the first 6 months of our trip? The van. More than lodging and more than fuel. The check engine light was coming on once every few weeks, often with friends.

Pretty!

I can't even tell you what all we fixed because I've repressed it. The point is that the van was very unreliable, and not knowing if/when your vehicle is going to break when you are driving through some very remote parts of this country isn't great.

Then there was the mud. Oh, the mud.

We wanted to take a trip to Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah to stargaze. It was the first International Dark Sky Zone designated in the United States years ago (there are now more). There is basically nowhere east of the Mississippi to see a true dark sky, so we were excited.

We picked the date of a new moon for maximum darkness. We were going to leave the RV at a campground, take a tent, and camp for a night. Unfortunately, it rained on the day we were planning to leave. No matter, we just delayed the trip by a day. The moon wouldn't technically be new, but it would be close enough.

Did I mention that it had rained?

Did I mention that we were in Utah?

Our trip started out well enough, but we came upon a detour halfway there. Apparently a bridge was out. As it turns out, you can't simply hop on the next road a few blocks over when a bridge is out in Utah. You are going many miles out of your way.

Google Maps helpfully provided two options for us: One shorter one via a back road and one (much) longer one via highways. Google Maps never lets me down, so I obviously chose the back road. After all, I wasn't looking to drive all day.

My first hint should have been the "Road Damage" sign on said back road, which was dirt. I noted it and proceeded. The road was fine. That sign was being overly dramatic.

My second hint should have been the guy we passed coming the other way that warned me about the road conditions. But he was in a small truck, and if he could make it, I could clearly make it. And the road was still fine.

Until it was not.

My third hint should have been when the van began moving in a direction other than that in which the wheels were pointed. While sliding around on the dirt mud road was fun, it wasn't terribly effective at moving us toward our destination. Fortunately, the road was downhill, so a controlled slide was all it took to get us to the bottom. Victory! All I had to do was ford the small creek and... oops. It was a valley. I now had to make it back up the other side.

This part didn't go so well. We got about halfway up the hill and stalled out, furiously spinning our tires.

Not visible: Another vehicle at the top of this hill, struggling to get up the next hill

It was clear that this was the end of the line. After performing a 19 point turn in the mud to get going the other way, we re-forded the creek and... immediately got stuck trying to get out the way we came in. It seems that downhills become uphills when traversed in the opposite direction.

Did not work

Also did not work

Fast-forward about an hour, and we had four or five other vehicles that joined us. They were coming in the same way we did, but they had a cautionary vehicle stuck in the mud that made them think twice about proceeding. We had a diverse mix of folks. It felt like the setup for a movie.

After we all hung out for a bit, debating what to do, one vehicle decided to give it a shot. It was a 4-wheel drive vehicle, as were all vehicles except ours. When it didn't come back in 15 minutes, that was enough for everyone else to go for it too. No one came back.

But we weren't going anywhere. Our hope at this point was that the sun would dry the road just enough for us to grip. Would it work? We had no idea, but we didn't have many other options. At one point a park ranger came by (turns out we were on BLM land but didn't know it) but couldn't offer much help other than moral support.

So we waited.

Fortunately, it was a beautiful day, and we had a beautiful view; there would have been worse places to be stuck. Julie brought along the book we were reading as a family, and so we read.

We did manage to pull off of the road

After a few hours, the road was indeed drying out. We gave it a shot, and it worked! We gripped just enough to get us out of the valley. And we finally did make it to Natural Bridges... via the very long route.

Boy, it sure would have been nice to have a 4-wheel drive vehicle like those other folks.

Well, this was the last straw. We couldn't flat tow, the van may blow up at any moment, and we can't travel on half the roads in the western part of the country (by my unofficial count).

We decided we needed a Wrangler. Not because we knew anything about Jeeps, mind you. Other than the fact that we saw them all the time at campgrounds, we did not. But that was an important piece of information; it meant they could be flat towed relatively easily.

We promptly started shopping for 3-4 year old Wranglers. This is an important time to point out that we're still in the middle of a pandemic that has wreaked havoc on the supply chain. No one can get new vehicles, which means used vehicles are in high demand. And by "high demand," I mean "3-4 year old vehicles selling for more than they did new." And that's if you can find one, which is easier said than done when moving weekly in a sparsely populated portion of the country.

We couldn't find one that was both not exorbitantly priced and somewhere near a place we'd be over the coming months. We finally decided to order a new one. If I was going to pay the cost of a new vehicle, I might as well get a new vehicle out of it.

In case you've already forgotten, we're still in the middle of a pandemic that has wreaked havoc on the supply chain. No one can get new vehicles, including us.

I walked into dealers offering to pay cash for a new Wrangler and was told that as much as they'd love to take my money, they can't promise me a vehicle in anything less than 100 days. One guy showed me in his system where he had been waiting on a new truck for a customer for 10 months, and the customer was an employee of the dealership!

So we did the math, figured out where we'd be in 100 days, and ordered one from a dealer in that location, which turned out to be AZ. It was a crapshoot, for sure. If it didn't show up in 100 days, we had a problem. But we also had few good options.

Fast forward 100 days...

The Jeep wasn't ready. And no one could tell us when it would be. We were basically told that one day it wouldn't be ready, and the next day it would, and they'd let us know when that happened.

Oh, and we wrecked the van but fortunately not to the point where it wasn't drivable (which was great foresight on Julie's part!).

Two functioning doors was enough (the driver's side sliding door was already busted from another issue)

Our time in AZ came to and end, and we moved on, Jeepless. But now we have a different problem: The insurance company is going to total the van.

On the one hand, this is great news. It means I can sell it to them and not have to worry about quickly selling it on the private market once the Jeep is ready. (It would take a little time to get set up to tow once the Jeep arrived, during which we'd have three vehicles to drive, which wasn't going to work.)

On the other hand, they want the van. If we wanted money for it, we had to turn it over, so we did.

This meant that if we wanted to go anywhere, we'd be going in the RV. This was not ideal. There's a reason you bring a second vehicle when traveling with a motorhome. It's so you don't have to pack up the coach just to go get groceries. We also had two National Parks coming up, one of which couldn't take an RV of our size. We ended up renting a car for a week to visit Death Valley. This of course required driving the RV 45 minutes to the rental agency in another state to get it and again to return it. Pro tip: This is not a great use of an RV.

Fortunately, we were only out of a second vehicle for a few weeks (first world problems, I get it). We ultimately had to pay to ship the Jeep from Phoenix, AZ to Ventura, CA. It showed up today.

It's a beautiful day, so we're going topless!

I still need to set it up to tow, but that all of a sudden feels like a very minor inconvenience.