So, Moab.

We wandered into town on Thursday, got the motorhome set up, and toddled down to the Arena to ogle the vendors. In the parking lot, we met a representative from a national magazine, who invited us out the next day to a photoshoot. Sure, sez we, because there's no bad there, right? Did the arena, ate at Moab Brewery, yadayada.

Friday, we hooked up with some friends and headed out to do a little trail called the Pickle (because if you screw up on it, you'll be in a pickle). And that was fun until the battery in the Willys died. Lord knows it was due, but it picked a hell of a time. So, we finished the trail (and did the bypass on the last obstacle) to get out faster, and raced into town to get a new battery and meet the magazine guy. We were a couple minutes late, but so was he, so it was all good.

And then a fuse blew, which shut the cooling fan off. Which is... not good, on the trail. These puppies overheat like mad if you're not careful because they're really stressed. The Hubby hotwired the cooling fan, and we cut our part of the photoshoot short to go into town and attempt (yet more) repairs. Apparently it was just a bad fuse, because the Hubby put a new one in, stressed it, and it didn't blow. Yay!

Saturday, which is Big Saturday in the parlance of the Jeep Safari, we headed out to Area BFE and played around there for the day. It's a privately-run place with all kinds of trails and obstacles for every level of vehicle and driver, and it's a lot of fun. And we were with the Rangely Boys (whose motto seems to be "If we didn't break something, we didn't actually wheel"), so that was quite entertaining too. Also, I got about 1500 words done on the Chains novel, which was nice.

Sunday, we headed out to Kane Creek, where we seemed to be faced (once again) with a dead battery. This time, the Hubby had one of the guys looking under the hood while he cranked it, and we discovered that not one, but both solenoids were loose. But at least that was the last of our trail troubles.

However, the old adage that more people are hurt falling off rocks in Moab than in jeeping accidents managed to hold true. One of the women in our group was standing on a rock, when her teenage son jumped onto it next to her--and the whole huge slab broke into three pieces and spilled them to the ground. The boy wasn't hurt, but she ended up with a dislocated elbow and a half-hour drive into town over rocks and through washes, which was...yeah. Hellish. But it could have been so much worse--she could have hit her head or broken bones or... eek. You just never think that a huge rock slab like that is going to break for next to no reason.

That put a damper on our enthusiasm, so most of us left on Monday. We stayed and went back to the Pickle with the Rangely group and a guy from where the Hubby works. And that would have been a nice short three-hour trail...if we hadn't got stuck behind a group of ten or so. So that turned into an all-day deal too. One of our guys broke his front knuckle joint in his front driveshaft, and another bent his driveshaft and had to nurse it back to camp.

We decided to head out Tuesday morning, which is when we discovered that the alternator in the motorhome wasn't charging the batteries. We nursed it to Wellington, grabbed some Subway, and charged the batteries from the Willys for an hour or so, then headed back out.

And that's when the trip went disastrously wrong for us.

The trailer has a bolt that holds the hitch ball latch in place. We lost the bolt, but didn't think much of it because it's, like, the third line of defense before the latch should fail, right?

Yeah, not so much.

Pulling out of the parking lot of the Walker's managed to bounce the hitch off the ball. So, we're tooling down the highway, not realizing it, pulling the thing by the chains (thank God for the chains, OMG), and then...had to slow down for a school zone. And that's when the trailer hit us. Fortunately, the Hubby is a skilled driver who does not panic or slam on his brakes, and he managed to get us stopped with a minimum of damage. It broke the poop tube on the motorhome and took out the trailer brakes and the trailer lights--but it could have been SO MUCH WORSE. Seriously, that could have taken out all three vehicles had it gone just a little farther south than it did.

We got it put back together, FOUND A BOLT, and got back on the road. With no trailer brakes or turn signals or brake lights and 125 miles to go. And of course, just to make the trip complete, it was snowing like hell over Soldier Summit.

But we made it home, more or less in one piece. And now here we are.

Coming up next: Weird shit you see in Moab.

So, Moab.

We wandered into town on Thursday, got the motorhome set up, and toddled down to the Arena to ogle the vendors. In the parking lot, we met a representative from a national magazine, who invited us out the next day to a photoshoot. Sure, sez we, because there's no bad there, right? Did the arena, ate at Moab Brewery, yadayada.

Friday, we hooked up with some friends and headed out to do a little trail called the Pickle (because if you screw up on it, you'll be in a pickle). And that was fun until the battery in the Willys died. Lord knows it was due, but it picked a hell of a time. So, we finished the trail (and did the bypass on the last obstacle) to get out faster, and raced into town to get a new battery and meet the magazine guy. We were a couple minutes late, but so was he, so it was all good.

And then a fuse blew, which shut the cooling fan off. Which is... not good, on the trail. These puppies overheat like mad if you're not careful because they're really stressed. The Hubby hotwired the cooling fan, and we cut our part of the photoshoot short to go into town and attempt (yet more) repairs. Apparently it was just a bad fuse, because the Hubby put a new one in, stressed it, and it didn't blow. Yay!

Saturday, which is Big Saturday in the parlance of the Jeep Safari, we headed out to Area BFE and played around there for the day. It's a privately-run place with all kinds of trails and obstacles for every level of vehicle and driver, and it's a lot of fun. And we were with the Rangely Boys (whose motto seems to be "If we didn't break something, we didn't actually wheel"), so that was quite entertaining too. Also, I got about 1500 words done on the Chains novel, which was nice.

Sunday, we headed out to Kane Creek, where we seemed to be faced (once again) with a dead battery. This time, the Hubby had one of the guys looking under the hood while he cranked it, and we discovered that not one, but both solenoids were loose. But at least that was the last of our trail troubles.

However, the old adage that more people are hurt falling off rocks in Moab than in jeeping accidents managed to hold true. One of the women in our group was standing on a rock, when her teenage son jumped onto it next to her--and the whole huge slab broke into three pieces and spilled them to the ground. The boy wasn't hurt, but she ended up with a dislocated elbow and a half-hour drive into town over rocks and through washes, which was...yeah. Hellish. But it could have been so much worse--she could have hit her head or broken bones or... eek. You just never think that a huge rock slab like that is going to break for next to no reason.

That put a damper on our enthusiasm, so most of us left on Monday. We stayed and went back to the Pickle with the Rangely group and a guy from where the Hubby works. And that would have been a nice short three-hour trail...if we hadn't got stuck behind a group of ten or so. So that turned into an all-day deal too. One of our guys broke his front knuckle joint in his front driveshaft, and another bent his driveshaft and had to nurse it back to camp.

We decided to head out Tuesday morning, which is when we discovered that the alternator in the motorhome wasn't charging the batteries. We nursed it to Wellington, grabbed some Subway, and charged the batteries from the Willys for an hour or so, then headed back out.

And that's when the trip went disastrously wrong for us.

The trailer has a bolt that holds the hitch ball latch in place. We lost the bolt, but didn't think much of it because it's, like, the third line of defense before the latch should fail, right?

Yeah, not so much.

Pulling out of the parking lot of the Walker's managed to bounce the hitch off the ball. So, we're tooling down the highway, not realizing it, pulling the thing by the chains (thank God for the chains, OMG), and then...had to slow down for a school zone. And that's when the trailer hit us. Fortunately, the Hubby is a skilled driver who does not panic or slam on his brakes, and he managed to get us stopped with a minimum of damage. It broke the poop tube on the motorhome and took out the trailer brakes and the trailer lights--but it could have been SO MUCH WORSE. Seriously, that could have taken out all three vehicles had it gone just a little farther south than it did.

We got it put back together, FOUND A BOLT, and got back on the road. With no trailer brakes or turn signals or brake lights and 125 miles to go. And of course, just to make the trip complete, it was snowing like hell over Soldier Summit.

But we made it home, more or less in one piece. And now here we are.

Coming up next: Weird shit you see in Moab.