I’m fairly convinced that Jane is possessed, though I can
never quite figure out if it’s by a friendly or malicious ghost. Regardless of
what type of ghost it is that inhabits my car, it really loves to fool around
on the first day of road trips. Remember that time I left for that big road
trip and ended up having to limp home due to a dead fuel pump? Or how about
that time I left for a trip and the car would not quit boiling gas in the tank?
Well, add this trip to the counter as well…
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| 2AM... well at least some of the stuff is piled on the floor near the car. |
Very surprisingly, we got off to a good start. Hauled our
butts out of Dodge at the crack of 8:45AM (an accomplishment for me,
considering that I had still been packing up the car at 3AM the night prior).
Ran great all the way out of town and looked just as good.
Once we hit the interstate though, I discovered a large
problem.
Remember last post how I said that I ruined the
alignment? Yeah, I really did. Mostly I just messed with the toe-in, which is
apparently a lot more important than I thought it was. I say this because now
suddenly my wonderful car dives into any divot in the road, follows any crack,
wiggles around, and is generally a total mess to drive. At lower speeds it isn’t
noticeable, but when going 85 mph, it is very noticeable. Mostly because if you
hit a bump you pretty much go flying off the road. Nevertheless, I am
experienced in all manners of Jane ridiculousness so I figured out how to
manage it and just powered through.
So, with all kinds of wiggling and shimmying and
shammying we made our way up I-10 towards Carlsbad Caverns National Park, our
first destination. This is the longest driving day (go figure) and also the
most boring, because west Texas is terrible. For the most part, at least. Some
of it looks like this:
But most of it looks like this:
Ughhhhhhhh.
Anyways, even though we probably traveled a few extra
miles just from all of the sideways weaving, we made it to New Mexico! Hurray.
Unfortunately, I forgot that there’s a time zone change.
So while I thought I was making really good time and only had 45 minutes left
to get to Carlsbad after that… well, I had another hour and forty-five minutes
to go. More weaving! Finally we got to the caverns though. By the time we got
there, Jane had decided she’d had enough of me and had returned to the classic “boil
the gas in the tank to cause panic” strategy. But that strategy no longer works
on me! So I just cracked the gas cap and went on into the caves.
Every once in a while I forget how good this car looks on
road trips. Ha! Just kidding, I don’t.
Anyways, the caves. If you are a fan of awesome caves, go
to Carlsbad Caverns! Holy moly is it beautiful. The cave complex consists of
multiple very large rooms, one of which that is supposedly the biggest in the
Western Hemisphere. You can see every cave structure possible here in one spot,
and I must say that the NPS has done a superb job lighting the caverns to
highlight the best features. You can either take an elevator down into the main
part of the caverns, or you can take the natural route, which allows you to see
more features at the expense of your knees. It is a very, very steep descent
(though I think it really is not as bad as the switchbacks before Angel’s
Landing in Zion NP). So of course that’s the route that I took.
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| As always, I assume all risk... lol |
Down in the caves, this is the kind of thing you get to see… I’ve cherry-picked some of the best images, though I have nearly a
hundred!
This was my favorite part of the cave by far. I don’t
know, it wasn’t giant or anything (probably 3 feet long), but it was just a
super cool stalactite. It looks like a celery stalk! Trying to envision the
order of events that would have caused it to grow that way was really neat.
I took a good three hours to go through the caves,
exploring every allowable nook and cranny. Then I got back out to Jane,
tightened up the gas cap, and wiggled and waggled my way off to my campsite for
the night. Couldn’t wait to get into my tent for a nice night’s sleep!
I set my tent up, started cooking dinner, and went to
tend to Jane. Every night I check all fluids just to make sure that she hasn’t thrown
everything on the ground. Interestingly, I found myself standing in a puddle
where previously there had been none… yep, all of the coolant had departed the
engine. No evidence of blown gaskets or cracked radiator or even coolant in the
overflow. Hmmmm. Just as I started thinking that some advanced form of
witchcraft had transported Jane’s coolant from inside the engine to the ground,
I noticed something rather silly. The lower radiator hose had just… fallen off
of the radiator. It didn’t burst, it didn’t lose its clamp, it simply decided
to no longer be attached. So of course all of the coolant fell out. So of
course I put the hose back on, tightened the hell out of it, and put coolant
back in. More specifically, I put in ¾ gallon of 50/50 mix that I had in the
car, my entire gallon of nice fresh spring drinking water (thanks Jane), and
then ¾ gallon or so of hard mineral-filled campground water, which of course
promptly negated any good that using clean non-mineral-filled water would have
done. Whatever. Filled it up, let the air bleed out, filled it up again, put
the cap on, and eyeballed it with extreme suspicion for the rest of the night.
I still cannot fathom how it is that I drove at speeds of
85 mph for 500 miles, only to have the hose fall off when I pulled into “home
base” for the night. I checked behind the car too and there was no path of
droplets indicating a slow failure. So yes, it did just spontaneously fall off.
Some days I just don’t know about this car…
It was an off day. But it could have been a million times
worse. As always, Jane takes care of me in the weirdest ways… kind of like a
sibling that punches you constantly but won’t let anyone else punch you. Here’s
to hoping for a less drama-filled day tomorrow!
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