Looks like someone lived one of my vacation nightmares....
"
We left California en route to Idaho.
After a few nice days at City of Rocks, we headed for Salmon and our final trip prep. Just past the small town of Carey, Idaho, the axle on our raft trailer blew up. It's impressive to see your own wheel following you up the highway, and smacking the tail end of your trailer after you've pulled off the road. Thank goodness no one was hurt.
Saturday afternoon, a few hours short of our destination, three (yes, three) spare tires for the trailer in the truck but stuck. Fortunately, Cyril, the owner of MK Trailers, in Carey, happened by. He didn't have any trailers small enough for our needs but he offered to get our trailer back to his shop while we ran down to Twin Falls and try to get a new trailer on a Saturday evening.
We got back to Cyril's shop, new utility trailer in tow, about three hours later. Cyril met us and told us he had hauled our old trailer, inflated raft and all, back to his shop down the highway on a forklift. I wish I had a photo. We deflated and rolled the raft and transferred everything to the new trailer. Cyril, very kindly, bought the trailer from us. He planned to put install a new axle and sell it.
We made it to Salmon around midnight.
The next day we did our final shopping. Then, I drove up to. Missoula to pick up my daughter at the airport. We had been unable to find a raft trailer between Carey and Twin Falls, so we settled for a utility trailer. I think I saw about half a dozen places selling raft trailers between Salmon and Missoula. Such is life.
The Main Salmon, between Corn Creek and Carey, was fun!
We arrived at Carey Creek Boat Ramp around 2:00 pm to find our truck had not arrived. I remembered estimating our arrival at Carey Creek as 3:00 pm, on my shuttle paperwork, so I figured they just hadn't arrived, yet. 3:00 came and went. We got a message out to some friends, on our Garmin. They contacted the shuttle company and learned that our truck had problems and the shuttle company had left it in Riggins.
We hitched a ride into Riggins, where my wife and kids got a room. I decided to risk going back out to Carey Creek for all of the gear. The truck did okay (with, literally, a dozen codes showing). I got back to the motel at midnight.
The next morning, we limped the truck down to McCall, which was our intended post-takeout destination. We arrived Sunday around midday.
First thing Monday morning, I limped the truck down to the Dodge dealership in Cascade. They told me they could look at it August 4th (it was July 17th). They suggested that the Dodge dealership in Boise was quite large and might be able to get me in sooner. I called them. They said, if I dropped it off on August 1st and left it for 3-5 days, they could take a look.
I limped back up to McCall and stopped at Valley Auto, where Sean told me they were about two weeks backed up but he'd squeeze it in as best he could. They are closed on Tuesdays, so Wednesday was the best we could hope for. We were supposed to have been home that same (Monday) night. Sean called later that afternoon. The fan had cut the wiring harness from the fan clutch, hence all of the electrical codes. He had ordered the part and would contact us when the truck was ready.
Wednesday morning, around 11:00, Sean called and told us we were ready to go! I picked up the truck, we loaded up and hit the road around 12:30, sights set on home.
Everything was great until about 30 miles west of Winnemucca. We went from highway speed to limp mode in a matter of seconds. We pulled off the highway and could go no farther. Fortunately, we had cell service. We got towed back to Winnemucca, where my wife had found a room.
The next morning, we contacted the shop to which the truck had been towed. Around midday, they called back and told us they could either replace a part for $3,000 + labor, or send the part to Elko for cleaning. The latter option was $600.00 + labor. Either way, we would not be back on the road for a week. We opted for the cleaning option. I'm not putting any more money into that truck (last year, on Gates of Lodore, it was a failed water pump and cracked exhaust manifold).
A dear friend drove out from California, hooked up our trailer, and got us home, last night (it was a 12 hour round trip, for her). Our truck, with some of our stuff, is still in Winnemucca. We'll head back there when we hear it's ready for pick-up.
We had a lot of adventures on this trip. We were also remarkably blessed:
The trailer failed right outside of a small town in an otherwise remote area.
The owner of the local trailer shop found us and went way above and beyond to help us out. (he even bought our trailer)
A passerby drove my family into Riggins when our truck did not show.
A very kind mechanic squeezed us into his schedule in McCall.
We had cell service when the truck broke down outside of Winnemucca.
A friend dropped everything to come and get us in Nevada.
I am certain the stories of this trip will be told for a long time. I'm just not sure how many of them will be about things that happened on the river."
