The Millers Go RVing - Day 17 & 18

The funny thing about staying in hotels on part of this trip is we had some spacious rooms that only allow 4 guests per room, but in Everett WA we had a room that allowed all 5 of us in 1 room but was so tiny we had to rearrange the furniture to get the rollaway cot in! And fold up the cot so we could open the room door. They advertised a free continental breakfast, which amounted to miniature cake doughnuts and a liquid that was labeled as orange juice on the dispenser but tasted like city water with maybe a few drops of something citrus-y in it -like maybe there was oj in it the day before but they forgot to put the orange in it that morning. We have never. It was hilarious.

The kids had been warned the night before that we must leave promptly at 8:15am to make our 9am tour at the Boeing airplane factory, and they did an excellent job of being on time. We can be on time when we have to. lol.
At the factory, we watched a short film before they loaded us on a tour bus and took us over to the massive factory. Photography is prohibited inside the factory- we weren't allowed to take any camera & phones with us- so we don't have any pictures, but it was fascinating. We walked through different areas of the factory on catwalks to watch 777s, 787 Dreamliner, and other large aircraft being built. Our tour guide reminded A of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle [of childrens' literature fame], with her chipper speeches.

 Everything at the factory is massive, jumbo-jet sized. Those garage doors though! 

The factory is so large they have their own community of services, including restaurants, day care and even their own fire department. They joke that they are the only community in the Seattle area without a Starbucks. We've heard the building itself is so large that it has its own weather and can rain inside the building, although we did not personally witness this.  

Someone in our tour group asked how much a brand new airplane costs. Ms. Chipper Tour Guide said she will tell us after we get back on the bus, when we're sitting down. R & JS were guessing 3-5 million. Wow, were they ever wrong! Try $320 million. Unbelievable. Yet in spite of that staggering price tag, Boeing has a waiting list of buyers. After revealing that astounding news, Ms. Tour Guide reminded us if a jumbo jet isn't in our budget, we need to stop by the gift shop because there are models that are affordable for anyone and we can still take a piece of Boeing home with us. (Great marketing tactic there.)

We browsed around exhibits in the visitor's center...

 We added Boeing to our itinerary for the aviation buff of our family. Maybe when he's a rich & famous pilot, he can afford this chair. For now, he went with the model and pilot wings pin. 

Around 11:30 we left Boeing and went to Jack in the Box for lunch (our new favorite restaurant). R called the garage to confirm the RV is going to be finished for sure before we headed south. They wouldn't commit; they kept saying "it should be". Well, we didn't want to drive 900 miles out of our way to sit in boring, stinking hot Nevada for a long holiday weekend when we could be sight-seeing. R told them to call us that day yet if they experience any delays. There was already that little business about needing to swap oil pans to make the new transmission fit... for an additional fee, of course. Cha-ching! Cha-ching! They had us 'over the barrel' and we both knew it. They agreed to throw in a free oil change - to dull the painful bottom line a wee bit. We emphasized again that we are on our way [to southern NV] the whole way from Seattle WA - call us if you run into any delays because we can still bail at 5:30pm quitting time and head over to Yellowstone if you're not going to get finished. On that note, we headed south.

Washington has some beautiful scenery, but the men were eager to get back in the RV so we were on a mission. Nevada, here we come! 

If Big Bertha wouldn't have broke down, we would have spent more time in Washington. JR & I especially regretted that we didn't have the chance to go on a whale watching expedition. We also had to eliminate Glacier National Park from our itinerary. Instead we got to see a whole lot more of Idaho and Utah than we expected. 

We stopped to eat just before we crossed into Idaho. JS started driving then and R was riding shotgun, which meant R needed to take the picture of the Idaho state sign for me. R is a notoriously terrible photographer, so we all cheered when he managed to pull this off! Give the man a round of applause. 

 Someone is on the phone. Again. 

The thing about being in Jane instead of Big Bertha is there isn't a lot of privacy for phone conversations with the fiance. We all got to add our 2 cents whenever we wanted. lol Welcome to the family, AM! 

JS drove till 2am, then R drove till 4am when we stopped for gas. We saw Mormons at that gas station in Utah. (Somewhere there is probably a Mormon family blogging about how they saw Mennonites in Utah. haha) We decided to sleep a couple hours there, so we parked by some semis in the back of a parking lot. Sleeping in a minivan isn't conducive to deep sleep, so you know you are super tired when you wake up to discover the semi next to you left and not a single one of you heard it. Either that or we are all so used to diesel noises.  

We hit the road again at 7am. Can you believe the garage called us in the morning when they opened and said it rained the day before which delayed them from working on Big Bertha?! (She was too big to fit inside their garage so they had to work on her outside which doesn't go so well in rain.) Furthermore, it was forecast to rain some more that day, so no promises she would be ready to roll by quitting time. R is generally more polite than I am, but he put the pressure on this time. He reminded them that we drove all night and we had requested a call -before we're 200 miles away- if they aren't going to finish up on time. They seemed unconcerned because they were open Saturday morning and could finish it up the next day if need be; we said 'no dice' because the rental car company is not open Saturday-Monday and we need to return the rental van TODAY. We started praying. Praying that the rain would go around Boulder City, praying that all the pieces of the RV would fit together slick as grease and go together in record time. You would think they were brain surgeons the way I prayed for their hands to be guided. I bet those mechanics were never prayed over as fervently as they were that day!

Since the RV wasn't finished yet, we knew we had time to "kill". So we did a little detour over to Bryce Canyon. The boys stayed in the van, trying to sleep, but the rest of us hiked a bit of the rim trail. 

It is more colorful than the Grand Canyon. And hiking down into it wouldn't be as difficult. Under different circumstances, we could have taken more time there. Glad we got to see it, even if we were too sleep-deprived & grungy to full appreciate it.

 Those rock formations are called hoodoos. Unique handwork of God. 

Their free spring water really was good cold spring water, not municipal water, so we filled our water bottles. We were definitely back across the Sierras and it was heating up again. The closer we got to NV the hotter it got. Overnight we drove from temps in the 60s to temps in excess of 100. 

We didn't stop at Red Rock Canyon, but we had to drive through it to get to & from Bryce, so we did some drive-by shooting...

 

Then we buzzed on down to Boulder City as fast as we could, arriving at 3:30pm. It was not raining. They were working on Big Bertha. But she was not finished yet.

You remember that burger and butter that was left in the RV fridge & freezer? (Refer back to Day 11 if you missed that part.) What happens to meat & butter in 110* heat for 8 days? Umm, you really don't want to know. Very ripe dead animal rotting beside the road would be a fair comparison to the stench. Since R had been too shy to ask the secretary at the garage to dispose of it the next day for us, he got the lucky job of dealing with the situation. The mechanics -who were very particular that we're not allowed to set foot inside the garage otherwise- were only too happy to point the way through the garage to the dumpster out back when R was holding a garbage bag of rancid food. Let's just say that everyone knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that you do NOT open the freezer for any reason whatsoever the rest of the trip. The fridge- open it, grab a water bottle, slam the door shut quick as you can. Since we are home, we have tried everything Google can dream up to remove the stench with only partial success. Anyone have a secret weapon for removing nasty odors?

                  

We checked with the car rental people about returning Jane. They preferred that we return her by 5 so the paperwork could be taken care of before they close at 6 for the holiday weekend. So we asked the mechanics if we can start loading our luggage back into Big Bertha while they were still working on her. They said we could, so we tried to keep the shaking [walking around inside] to a minimum, but nothing screams "we are here, we are serious about driving this thing off the lot before you can go home today" like loading it while they work underneath. The pressure was on; they started scurrying around and Big Bertha became the center of attention. R told them to skip the oil change so we could get on the road quicker. Then he left to return the rental van while the kids & I sat waiting on them to finish Big Bertha.
At 5:30 a mechanic took her on a test drive and declared it all good. He parked her on an uphill slope in front of the garage -without wheel chocks. Cool! We no longer have to jump out and chock right away. A cool perk of the huge 'chunk of change' we had to drop in NV. JS drove her over to the rental place in the next town to pick up R, and we were back in business. Hooray!

Big Bertha runs 'like a top' now. R's doubts about whether it was something he did that made the transmission give out melted away as the miles peel away and she runs smoother than when we bought her. We conclude the tranny was probably going bad when we bought her and it's a miracle the old girl made it as far as NV. Now that she's good as new -the youthful spring back in her step- maybe we should keep her...          

       

R felt pretty good in spite of just 3 hours of sleep, so we decided to keep driving as long as we could. I got out the tablet and found an RV park in St George Utah (just across the Utah state line) that still had a site available. JR googled the distance and it said 2 hours, but it kept getting later and later. We forgot about crossing a time zone and losing an hour. Then in AZ we hit some strong winds from a thunderstorm we could see off in the distance. The wind got ahold of our slide-out awning, and flop, flop, flop. Not again!! The awning on the right side was still cinched up tight with green clothesline [redneck fix], but this is the awning on the left side now. R pulled over and strapped it with a bungee cord. I can't believe I am praying over this RV again while we're rocking in the wind!
We finally got to the RV park at 9:30pm. It was a really nice one and we regret we didn't have more time there to enjoy the amenities. I would tell you how wonderful a shower felt after 1200 miles, 110* heat and only 3 hours of sleep, but that would be TMI. We were utterly exhausted and no one was counting sheep that night. But so thankful to be back in Big Bertha!        

   
to be continued...