Day 20 (Wednesday, July 14th) Truck Trouble

This was a driving day. We were supposed to leave the Grand Canyon, drop a few thousand feet of altitude, cross some desert, go up and down a few more mountains, and then drop down and cross over the Hoover Dam as we went from Arizona to Nevada. We'd climb up into Nevada for a few miles and finish by setting up camp about 10 miles before Las Vegas.

Apparently all the climbing and crossing the desert caused a lot more heat than I thought because I boiled off a lot of coolant and didn't know it. All three of my temp guages (oil, trans, and water) stayed right in the green until the water temp slammed up into the red and pegged without warning. We'd just found that the road going over Hoover Dam isn't part of the Interstate Highway System for a reason. Interstates max out at 6% grade. The road from the dam up to Boulder City has a 10-12% grade and goes on for miles. It was a brutal climb for my truck.

You guessed it, that's where it all happened. The needle pegged, the instruments beeped at me, and I grabbed a piece of the gravel shoulder. As I pulled off the road some white smoke came out the tailpipe so I risked cooking my turbo-charger's oil-cooled bearings and shut the engine down without letting it cool. We were two miles from our rv park............

We have a nationwide towing service for our truck, but I had to sit in the desert heat (110+) for about two hours until they arrived. Kim, Holly, and the boys got a ride with a Boulder City police officer and sat it out at their station until the tow truck dropped me and the trailer at the campground. He took the truck to the closest Ford dealer and left it for service.

Tomorrow I find out what got broken and what it'll cost to repair, but it looks like we might lose some time while they repair it. Kim and I will start looking at itinerary adjustments to get us back on schedule. We'll also rent a small car and tour the Hoover Dam. We're here for a while so we'll do what we can to make the best of it.