It was an interesting week that began with my car not starting Monday morning when I needed to be in American Fork for an orthodontist appointment and Andrew cleaning the battery terminals and charging it all night after the lady at O'Reilly auto parts checked the battery, alternator and starter and said everything was running fine.
It ended with us taking the car on a long road trip through canyons and back roads to Jackson Hole, walking around the city for a couple hours and coming back to find that the car wouldn't start -- and of course, since Jackson is a tourist town, all mechanics go home at 6 and Napa Auto Parts closes at the same time.
A couple hours later (after a nice lady gave us a ride to Kmart to buy a car battery that turned out to make no difference at all, we rode the town bus through practically the entire city in the dark and an even nicer lady attempted to jump our car and called tow companies and mechanics), we got the car started and made it back to our KOA.
It was disappointing, to say the least, when we realized that it was no longer safe to turn our car off and we basically raced through Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park (making a few stops for me to jump out of the car and take pictures while Andrew kept it running). The animals all seemed to be in hibernation, except for a stampede of buffalo that managed to keep an entire line of cars behind them for at least a half hour because the cars in front of us were too chicken to honk or gently herd them out of the road.
But the good news is I got to spend some much-needed time with my family in the beautiful state that I've missed so much. I also got to visit my grandpa, who fell and broke his hip and has been in the nursing home for several days following surgery. And Andrew, who is awesome at fixing things, is pretty sure the problem with the car is the ignition switch -- which he was miraculously able to score on Amazon for only $25 plus free two-day shipping (meaning it will be here tomorrow).
I'm going to put more photos of our trip up on Wanderlust and Weekends soon, but for now, here's one of a famous barn just outside Grand Teton National Park. Due to a fire burning in the Salmon area, the Tetons were really hazy and hard to see during our trip, but I love how the barn looked at sunrise. Next time we're there, I'm going to get some killer pictures with the Tetons looking as they normally do -- majestic and brilliant blue.
