BootsnAll Travel Network



My Man Wolf

From Bryce Canyon we made our way to Zion National Park. Our van was knocking the entire way. After Zion, we decided to head to St. George since there was a VW mechanic. We didn’t arrive until Saturday, and of course the repair shop was closed on Saturday and Sunday. We decided to spend the night at Snow Canyon State Park. That is one of those surprises I mentioned – it was beautiful. It had petrified sand dunes, live sand dunes, narrow canyons, tortoises and Gila monsters. It was extremely hot – close to 100 and that night we laid out on the hot pavement and watched for shooting stars. William finally saw his first shooting star, and Julian just fell asleep on the blanket.
Snow Canyon     Canyon Trail
We decided we would not wait until Monday for the repair shop to open and start making our way head Vegas, where there definitely were several repair shops. In Snow Canyon some Dutch women told us about Mesquite, NV and how it is possible to get really cheap hotel rooms. When we rolled into Mesquite it was about 104 degrees (40 Celsius) and an air-conditioned room sounded perfect. That was definitely the right decision for us since at 10:00 PM it was still 97 degrees and the Yoda Van was sweltering. We paid 30 bucks for a decent hotel room and went swimming twice.Mesquite is not a nice place. At least Vegas has a lot of flair and they go all out. Mesquite is just cheap and trashy and the worst of what these casinos are all about: crappy $7.99 prime rib buffets, cheesy flashing lights, bingo tournaments and old run-down casinos.

That night we ran some errands and the knocking sound was even louder, no longer just in 3rd and 4th gears, but was occurring in all gears (even reverse), and also even when the clutch was pressed down. This was not good.

The next morning we assessed our options: stay in Mesquite another night, have our car towed to Las Vegas or just risk it and drive to Vegas. We didn’t want to stay in Mesquite another night since we’d wake up tomorrow with the exact same dilemma. We called our road service and they said they would tow the car to Vegas, but then we’d still have to get all of us to Vegas somehow. To risk it and drive was not ideal either since it was 75 miles and almost nothing in between us and Vegas. We decided to just take the car out onto the freeway and see how the noise was first. We put in a call to the shop before we left and got on I-15. The knocking was just the normal/customary knocking we were accustomed to so we decided to just keep going and live on the edge and risk it. The temperature along the way was about 105 and breaking down would have been horrible. These were the longest 75 miles of the entire trip.

You can all now breathe a sigh of relief because we made it without incident. We pulled into the repair shop and out came a tall, strapping, angel named Wolf. Wolf drives a souped-up synchro, and has driven Vanagons for 20 years. After describing the symptoms he immediately said it was our CV joint. Within 3 hours he had a new one installed and we were back on our way. The great thing about Wolf was that he spent a lot of time talking to us and Matthias was able to pick his brain about our car. If any of you are in Las Vegas and need some work done on a Vanagon (or other VW or Audi) Wolf is your man.

It is such a great feeling to be on the road and not worry about the van. My carefree spirit has returned and I feel that the open road is calling us again. It is such liberation and a great weight off our shoulders.

In Las Vegas we have been staying with someone Matthias used to work with in Seattle. Lynn and her husband Daren are putting us up for 4 nights. They are such amazing hosts and good company, and we’ve felt very much at home here. They had a stocked fridge with beer and juice boxes (which makes our entire family happy). They even gave up their own bed so we could have the view of the city from their room and have the kids in the same room with us. What I thought was even more amazing was that they offered to do the same for any of our friends who read our blog. Just give them a call when you are close to Las Vegas – (702) 606- HAHAHAHA!

Las Vegas is so crazy – even the playgrounds are over the top. Today we took William and Julian to a playground near where we are staying. This playground was about 1500 square feet and there were 3 stories, 5 slides, 3 tunnels, 5 ride-on spring cars, 2 bulldozers, a truck, a train, a pretend gas station and these wicked curvy pathways all throughout. (Remember on Sesame Street that one segment where a pinball is sliding along those curvy tracks with soul music in the background “1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12” That is what these paths reminded me of.)

Today is my Mom’s birthday (Happy Birthday, Mom!) and our 9th wedding anniversary. We’re headed out to the strip with the kids and then we’ll come home for the next episode of Project Runway. Tomorrow Lynn and Daren said they would baby-sit so Matthias and I can have a night out by ourselves. We’ll be leaving Friday morning and heading to the Grand Canyon and then on to Albuquerque.



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One response to “My Man Wolf”

  1. RobVi says:

    Hi guys, I’m glad you’ve made it this far! Sounds like quite the adventure you’re having. I’ve been through Mesquite with my family and we stayed at some place that had a sign reading “wimming in the ool”. It had no cable, the sheets were dirty, and the ool had ducks in it 🙂 Good luck in Vegas!

  2. Nick says:

    Hi Bay-Family,

    na das hört sich ja alles – abgesehen von dem bibbern mit dem Van-Problem -sehr sehr gut an. Ich werde immer neidischer. Ich hoffe, Ihr denkt ab und zu auch mal an die “armen” Normalos wie Martin und mich, die den ganzen Tag imBürostuhl abhängen und hirnen:-)

    Hoffentlich passiert dem Vanagon jetzt nix mehr. Aber Atze ist ja jetzt Profi. Mit ein wenig rudimentärem Zamboni-Wissen und den Insights von Wolf wird er es schon machen.

    Viel Spaß weiterhin. Ich drück Euch die Daumen. Grüße aus Deutschland an die ganze Rasselbande.

    Nick

  3. […] After that we weren’t sure where to go next. All we knew was that we wanted to visit our friends in Vegas (we wrote about them in August 2006 in the blog called “My man Wolf” ) and spend 1 night somewhere between San Diego and Vegas. We stopped at a visitor center near the border and mapped out our route. Everything seemed to be a piece of cake until we noticed that the further away from the coast we got , the hotter it got and despite being at almost 5000 feet (1500 meters) the temperature reached over 100 degrees (38 Celsius) and we were told that it doesn’t cool down a lot at night. We had too many hot and uncomfortable nights in the Yodavan so we decided to drive back to the coast and look for a hotel. We finally found one in San Bernardino, just a few blocks away from the original Mc Donald’s. I must say, that after 11 months on the road this was the first time that I really felt unsafe. Our hotel was clean and had a small pool, but the area around it was not a place I would want to hang out at night. Being back in the States started out very strange. […]

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