Have you had one of those days that starts out seemly fine but unexpectedly turns on you then just won’t go out easy? That was our day driving from Walla Walla to Bruneau Dunes State Park in Idaho.

We left Walla Walla right on schedule at 9 am and our stop at the propane dealer on the way out of town was easy peasy, so conveniently located just 5 blocks from the RV Park and right near the freeway on ramp.

The drive to Baker City was beautiful and the fuel/lunch stop was uneventful.

The weather was fine…some wind in the passes, but sunny with spectacular fall colors.

 

The coach was running great but for some reason Ernie, our Chevy Equinox was not getting charge through the power cable from the coach. And that my friends is where the day started getting hinky. No charge means a dead battery which mean the power assist steering could be problematic which means Ernie could have problems adjusting his steerage to the bumps in the road – NOT GOOD!

Every hour we stopped to find a dead battery and spent time charging Ernie’s battery back up. Wow, did the drive time start to get really long. The five hour drive was now a seven hour drive.

I didn’t even connect the dog poop that I stepped in at our third rest stop as a bad omen.

Finally, we neared the cut off for Bruneau. Of course, that is where the freeway work started. Lanes rotated to the other side of the freeway which meant we missed the exit that google suggested. No worries, there were two other options suggested by my buddy google maps.

Hmm, it seems we actually took the most convoluted option.

 

We finally arrive at Bruneau Dunes State Park around 6:30 pm. Still not tragic and it appeared that the park was virtually unoccupied – sweet!

 

 

After pulling into the loop that suited us best, we discovered that yes, Ernie’s damn battery was dead…of course. Again not tragic but we needed to get the car disconnected from the tow bar in order to back the coach into the site.

Well, guess what now??? The tow bar wasn’t cooperating. The large bracket pins would not release come hell or high water. This really has never happened. On top of that when we tried pulling the coach forward the tow bar wouldn’t come out of the hitch receptor attached to the coach…really weird.

In the mean time, Wally had connected the battery charger to power and onto Ernie’s battery thinking we could recharge the battery in 15 or 20 mins while we disconnected the car from the tow bar. Seemed like a great plan except the battery was still 0% charged after 50 minutes of trying unsuccessfully to release the car from the tow bar. Can you sense frustration setting in?

Sometime during this 50 minutes of sheer frustration, I decided to accomplish something and slipped into Ernie to disconnect the air braking system. Hey…that was actually easy! Once I got that done, I put the car into park and set the emergency brake. Being a safety conscious gal, this seemed like a prudent idea.

I step out of  Ernie feeling jubilant when Wally informed me that if he ever got the damn car disconnected we could just roll it back off the road and hope the battery would charge over night. Hmm, I just put the car into park and without the battery charging further, the car couldn’t be shifted back into neutral. Well, Crapola!! The look on his face when I told him some dummy girl put Ernie in park was priceless.

In the mean time, Sucia was serious unhappy as she has now been in her crate (with a litter box) for over 9 hours – that constitutes kitty abuse according to her. So I fed her some super delicious squishy food and promised her that she would be freed from jail soon.

Did I mention we were missing a really beautiful sunset?

 

 

After some pounding, jostling and a bit of blood…Ernie was free. Miraculously there was enough charge in the battery to get him into neutral and rolled off the road. Yay..that means we could get the coach backed into the site and set up.

By now, it was dusk but we had the smarts to put on our bluetooth headsets and got the coach backed into the site with no further trauma. We got set up, fired up the traeger, freed the cat, fed the dog and then I poured us a glass of wine.

 

 

Things were looking better until I knocked Wally’s wine glass off the counter (silver lining… the glass didn’t break) and he came back from his dog walk to find Bentley managed to step in his own poop. Yep, I can’t make this stuff up. Are you ready for this day to be over? I know I am, except I am starving and craving some brown alcohol.

I know what you are thinking.. we burned dinner or the BBQ stopped working. Nope, we came through dinner unscathed and I sat down to write this post with a glass of Bulleit bourbon and ginger beer. Sigh, things are looking up!~!!

Well except, we took a look at the weather forecast and discover that Friday is going to be a windy, windy day here in Bruneau. EEK… 30 MPH with the possibility of gusts up to 40 MPH. I am going to keep sipping my delicious drinkie and hope the weather forecast changes but really…this day just needs to give it up!!