Day 17

The kids went to bed pretty late last night but did sleep in until 8:30 again. We of course were then slow going to start. We had the continental hot breakfast at the Holiday Inn and finally hit the road again at about 10 o'clock. We wanted to get out sooner because we had planned to do lots more shopping in the Seattle area. Oh well.

We left the hotel with a half tank of gas but for some reason, didn't fill up in town. We started hearing a strange whiny rumbling sound from under the motor home. It was faint but definitely a new sound. So an hour later, we are of course in the middle of no where in desperate need of fuel. Lance was again prepared to run completely out and ready to use the few gallons he had stored in the trailer. The needle was below the red "E" line, and we still had 12 miles until the next gas station. The sound from under the motor home was now at a loud screeching decibel. Lance was trying to figure out what it was that was making the sound and kept using big words which I had no idea what they were or what they meant. I just wanted to know if it was bad or just something we'd have to live with hearing!

God saved us again, and got us to the gas station. Lance shimmied himself under the motor home to find what he thought was the rear differential axial seal was leaking. He came out from underneath shaking his head and he just said "we're done!" I couldn't believe it. 5000 miles down and we were 4 hours away from Bellingham. So we sat there a minute to figure out what the heck we were going to do next.

I'm sitting there running through all the scenarios in my head, coming to the conclusion that we're just going to load all our stuff into the yukon and say good bye to the motor home. Just leave it there on the side of the road for all I care! Or George and Renee could stay behind with it to get it fixed and take it back to Florida with them if its fixable. All I knew is that we needed to get on that boat Friday night! We made it this far, we're not gonna miss it now!

George got underneath while Lance was trying to explain, "Do you see that hose with the fluid leaking out, that's bad!" but George was confused because what he saw was something totally different. So Lance got back under again to see what George was looking at and discovered it was not at all what he was originally thinking. Apparently its only the drive shaft bearing, not functioning properly and the leaking fluid is gasoline from a leaking hose! We're good to go!! (just a slow leak, nothing to worry about!) Lance of course had only considered the worst when he went looking so he was too quick to judge what might have been wrong.

Now we still don't really know what the problem is, so we're just praying we will actually make it up to Bellingham.

Back on the highway once again, Lance and I had big plans to go shopping so we got to the hotel in Everett, Washington where we had everything we needed right there. We didn't want to go all the way up to Bellingham yet because they pretty much only have a walmart, and we needed other stores like, Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy, and Toys R Us. And because George and Renee will be renting a car from Seattle in the morning and it would have been a long haul to go back that way in the morning to get the car.

We unhooked the trailer from the Yukon and went on another shopping spree! We got to spend a small fortune on new goods for our new house, a few toys for the kids, and a few toys for Lance. We stopped back at the hotel to unload the 6 boxes of diapers and to grab some food at the hotel. All they had left was a bread stick, beer and wine. Lance ate the breadstick and had a beer and I had 2 glasses (small plastic cups) of wine and was feeling good having not eaten since breakfast! (Part of my diet plan having eaten way too much fast food these past few weeks! Haha! Not really, just sort of forgot to eat lunch with all the engine chaos!) Then we drove up to Bellingham to buy the Duallie BOB stroller I found on craigslist last week. I called the guy and he gratefully held the stroller for me until I made it into town! Now I had my toy too!

Back at the hotel, George and Renee had played in the pool with the kids, got them bathed and in their pjs, so all we had to do was put them in bed! What a blessing its been to have them along the way to help so much!

Another great day packed full of excitement!