Lake Tahoe Trip Part 1--The Adventure

Mark and I had been looking forward to our Lake Tahoe vacation with my parents FOREVER! I was looking forward to cooler weather. Mark was looking forward to time off work. And we both were looking forward to DOTTING GRANDPARENTS!

We were all packed by Saturday, ready to hop in the car Sunday afternoon after church and so Mark could get some good sleep after working two nights in a row. Everything went according to plan. We stopped by and wished Larry a Happy Father's Day. Dee graciously gave us some chicken sandwiches for the road. We were on the freeway by 3:15 heading North and feeling quite proud of ourselves. Just past Lancaster, the car started acting weird--the RPMs were jumping from 3 to 4 randomly about every minute. We thought it was just the road but when it kept doing it and more frequently, we stopped on the side of the road, just past Pearsonville in the middle of nowhere. Our cell phone battery was almost dead. Whoops! We called the parents, they weren't sure what it was. So we turned back to Pearsonville which turned out to be nothing but a gas station/Subway and asked around about garages/hotels. They, of course, had none of the above but suggested heading south 17 miles to Ridgecrest. We charged the cell phone for a couple hours and headed towards Ridgecrest, wondering if AAA towed in Nowheresville.

We made it to town without any problems. We found a great little hotel. And Mark got to watch the Laker game. Secretly, I wonder if he made a deal with his car, just so he could watch the game.

The next morning, Mark found a garage that figured out that the problem was just some spilled battery acid on some switch that was confusing the computer. We could wait there two days for the part to be ordered. Or we might be able to make it to Lake Tahoe. We chose option number two--not that the people of Ridgecrest weren't nice enough.

So we took it easy the rest of the trip and had no flare ups. Thanks for all those prayers, guys! We stopped at Schat's Bakery in Bishop and had great sandwiches and chocolate raspberry cake and made it safely to Lake Tahoe about 4:00. Whew! An adventure I do not want to repeat!