On The Road Again?
We said goodbye to our friends in Gunnison, and started for Cheyenne. Just out of town, Mel turned on the windshield wiper cleaner and nothing came out, so we pulled over and he proceeded to fill it...Whoops! He stopped, because he noticed that he'd poured some into the brake fluid. What little he'd accidentally put in might cause problems, so we spent the night in Gunnison where we'd find a mechanic to fix it in the morning.
Luckily, Dave and Darrell the Mechanics on Duty got right on it. They drained and refilled the brake fluid, and soon we were on our way.
Lots of old mines in the mountains.
Just what everyone needs. A wagon load of antlers.
At Colorado Springs we stopped for lunch at a deli. After lunch we drove down the street and stopped at a light. When we started again we heard a pop, and saw black smoke blowing out the back. Very little engine power. We pulled over and I called Jim in Fort Collins to ask if he knew of a place where they worked on Navions, since he has one too. He found Camping World on the computer and gave us the phone number and address. It turned out that they didn't work on engines, but they told us about Springs Auto & Truck Service where we could get it fixed.
We putted to the address we'd been given. It was a busy place, but they put someone right on our problem; a mechanic who had worked on Volkswagen engines. He said ours was similar, but had it been a gas engine instead of diesel we wouldn't have made it to their shop. The engine hose had pulled out, along with the windshield wiper hose....thanks to that shake, rattle and creep road we'd traveled so many times days earlier. The service and cost was so good that it's easy to see why they have so much business.
The mechanic fixed the hoses, and replaced one light. Before long we were on our way again. As you can see, it was raining, and the day was slipping away.
We didn't make it to Ray and Donnie's before nightfall. It's hard to find your way around in strange places. Don't laugh. Tim gave us a nice GPS, but we never could figure out how to use it...even with help. It's kind of a to-each-his-own kind of thing when you get our age. We stopped at the truck stop near Cheyenne, where we camped the time I took pictures of the antelope. It had changed a lot since then. There wasn't a place to camp for the night, so we had dinner in the truck stop restaurant and left. It was really dark by then, so we drove to the outskirts of town and parked in the large empty parking lot of the American Legion. Mel's a member of our local chapter, so we felt at home. Despite the setbacks, we met some wonderful people who helped us along our way...Unlike Joe Purdy's cute lyrics on this page, it wasn't a hopeless matter. However, the engine hose problem would pop up over and over in the pages to come.
