Summer 2011 Roadtrip

July 20, 2011 to August 10, 2011

When we last left off - Max was driving from Spokane, WA to get Buzz the traveling cat, who had gotten herself lost and then found in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. When he arrived back in Michigan, the vet told him that she was listless and he had found her face down in the food bowl not eating. He said Buzz was dangerously weak and malnourished, and that he in fact did not expect Buzz to live. But when Buzz heard Max's voice she began meowing from the back room. The vet let Max in the back with a can of food and she immediately perked up and devoured it. Max had a stressful time getting back, it was not clear if Buzz was recovering, and to make matters worse, the van had been overheating. Luckily, Bob, the man who found Buzz on his porch 5 miles from where we last saw her, knew and helped set up an appointment with Bob Berg who was the head mechanic at the local Ford dealership when our Annie (the van) was built. On his way to get a new fan clutch installed by this new Bob, a mule deer ran out of the woods smack into the front of the van. Luckily Bob was only two miles down the road, and Annie made it to his door, where she would not start up again.Bob Berg is an amazing man. He opened the hood, bridged two innocuous points in the engine compartment with a hand tool of some sort he produced out of thin air, and told Max to turn the key. Annie started right up. Her ac compressor and radiator had bent inward, pushing the fan within millimeters of being obstructed by the fan shroud and/or the engine itself, but she was running. Bob bypassed and removed the transmission cooler that, sitting out in front of the radiator and ac compressor, had been destroyed by the impact with the deer and was leaking fluid. Bob remembered from his dealership days that the cooler was an add on for a towing package, and Max wouldn't need it because he wasn't towing anything. Bob managed to get the new fan clutch in with a couple inches less room to work with in what is already a cramped engine compartment, and pronounced the van sound enough to make it home, where it would need a new radiator. He was right. Max drove all the way back to California without any further repairs (the horseshoe on the front bumper must have had something to do with it.) It took both us andBuzz a few months to recover from the traumatic extension to the end to our last road trip. We were hesitant to endeavor another asphalt odyssey for all sorts of reasons including not being able to take more time away from work any time soon.Nevertheless, only one year later, the call of the road and Emily's cousin's wedding 800 miles north of us in Seattle during the heat of summer provoked our wanderlust once more. Buzz, amazingly still with us, was looking as good as she was going to get, visions of galloping mule deer had faded from Max's peripheral vision, and we were all itching to explore. Looking at her favorite map - A Guide to Your National Forests and Grasslands - Emily noticed that we could potentially travel primarily through National Forests all the way back home. The plan was to take two weeks and 2000 miles to get back the 800 we drove to Seattle, to research beforehand the multitude amazing sights that lie between Seattle and Covelo, but not form an itinerary, just a working knowledge of what there is to do. We did this in an effort to not stress about being anywhere at a certain time, and leave room to discover new places and explore. Unlike our previous trips, there would be no need to rush each day to make miles. We could even <gasp> backtrack.

Oh, and we decided we were celebrating our 10th Anniversary this trip. We took our first road trip together (pre-Buzz) in August 2001. We were also determined to finally find a hot spring. How could we not have fun?

Thanks to Ted's Rainbow Auto Parts (being run by Ted's daughter and our sometimes Omaha 8 buddy, Terry) and Max's friend Danny who fixes heavy machinery somehow finding time to put a new radiator in a 1988 Ford Econoline, Max was finally able to heed Bob Berg's advice and coordinate the installation of a new radiator in our trusty van, two weeks before our departure. He also created a grill out of screen door material and universal Trucklights- to keep the bugs out and be road legal. The road would prove if the new radiator and a face lift were all Annie needed, but everything looked good to go with a week to spare before we wanted to leave for Seattle.

"In that case," Buzz thought, "I'll start exhibiting symptoms of a urinary tract infection," just in time for Max to drive her two hours away to the vet twice in one week, and figure out that she is now entering the later stages of kidney failure. The vet explained that kidney "failure" is actually kidney "not-really-doing-its-job-all-the-time" so she can live happily for a long while if we feed her stuff that doesn't tax her kidneys and supplements what her kidneys aren't doing for the rest of her body. As far as organ failure it ends up seeming like the least horrible, and at least she got sick before we left, hopefully instead of halfway through the trip in the middle of nowhere.

Although this was our shortest road trip (at a paltry 3,000 miles,) it is nomadicat's longest journal, and we hope you enjoy it.

"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." Napoleon Bonaparte

Photo: Summer Lake sunset from Government Harvey Pass