Hospitals, Tow Trucks and Repair Services, Oh My! (Long)

Hospitals, Tow Trucks and Repair Services, Oh My!  (Long)

Dave had been planning for us to head easterly in order to go through Reno and  Carson City, NV and then down to the northeast side of Death Valley.  For some reason I was not feeling good about that route and reluctantly he changed his mind.  We headed straight south down I-5 and planned to cross the Sierras at Bakersfield.

We left Atwood late in the day and headed towards Bakersfield planning to stay at a rest stop south of Sacramento...which we did.  The next morning, while I was stretching, suddenly the ceiling was spinning.  I ask Dave to pray for me. (First resource!) It took a while before I was able to see enough to think about getting up.  Finally things got still and I got up and took a shower.  As I was getting dried off, I again started feeling poorly and hurried to lie down.  Soon after I was nauseated and vomiting.  After that I felt better and we decided to head on down the road.  I had a nice cup of tea with peppermint but I was still dizzy off and on.  As we continued down the road, I got sick two more times.  The dizziness came and went and came again.  By the time we got to Bakersfield I was all for going to an urgent care facility.  Siri was unhelpful for some reason and we found a hospital more or less by accident…no pun intended. (I imagine God had a hand in that!)  After blood tests and a CT scan, it was determined that it was not anything serious but just an inner ear issue that should resolve itself eventually.  I got a prescription for the dizziness and another one for the nausea and we were on our way to Camping World to spend the night so Dave could get a new water pump and a few other things in the morning.  (The water pump for the sinks and showers had quit after filling up at the rest stop.)

On the way we stopped at Sam's Club in to stock up since we were planning to head into the desert for some extended boondocking time.  While there we met a man from Craig's List from whom we bought a guitar for me.  (I used to play a little about 30-40 years ago and suddenly had a hankering to pick it up again...it's my Christmas present.)

The boondocking place at Camping World had electricity...very unusual for a free spot...so we watched a movie...it was an old John Wayne movie, "Eldorado"...which was about as much energy as I had for the day.  We went to bed early and I slept more soundly than I had in quite some time.

By the time I got up, Dave had already done all his business at Camping World and was ready to head down CA-58 which apparently is old US-66 (Of "I get my kicks on Route 66" fame).  It was quite windy in Bakersfield, but as we left the valley, we crawled into a dense fog.  We didn't get to see much of the Sierras until we rolled out on the other side in Mojave.  We stopped for lunch and to talk about whether we wanted to boondock there or go on to Barstow.  There was a stiff wind in Mojave so we decided to head on to Barstow.  Dave took his usual trip around the coach to check everything out and to his dismay discovered that we were leaking some kind of oil or fluid.  After checking levels, and not finding any alarmingly low, we decided to continue toward Barstow and keep checking it as we went along.  We stopped a couple of times.  By the time we got to Boron (they make borax there), it was clear that the leak was power steering fluid.  Fortunately we had good cell reception and called our Roadside Assistance.  After almost 2 hours they called to say that there was not a tow truck around big enough to tow our rig.  We thought we could make it to Barstow if we just had more fluid.  Another 2 hours passed before a small tow truck arrived with the cherished liquid.

We did indeed make it to Barstow.  We limped into Main Street Auto and Repair after dark.  We had called them earlier and they said we could park in their lot overnight.  In the morning, the owner, Jamie, and two of his men worked for at least an hour trying to find a solution to our problem.  Ultimately they decided it would be better and faster for us to go to another company on the other side of town that had more expertise in diesel repair.  And after all that...they didn't charge us a dime!  (Do “I Spy” God’s hand again?!)

There is another very interesting side light to all this...if we had gone to Reno instead and the power steering had gone out at about the same milage, we would have been in Death Valley far from any town and probably had no cell service. 

Thank you Lord for watching out for us—again!