This post was most recently updated on July 11th, 2015

I don’t know, y’all – this may end up being more than two parts! It was a pretty big adventure, so I guess we’ll see how things go …

When last we spoke, my darling husband, intrepid internet truck buyer that he is, and I were traveling out of Enid after buying a new summer car.  It was halcyon days, my friends – we had the open road ahead of us, the sun was shining, and I thought Texas was an on-planet destination.

What I found out, several hours later, was that Texas was just a dream.  A far away dream that would elude me for several more hours.  Here’s what happened: 

After hours of traveling across the great state of Oklahoma, we finally (finally) reached the Texas border.  I have never been so happy to see the Red River in my life!  But my relief and joy was short-lived.  We pulled into a rest stop so I could … avail myself of the facilities and my husband could take a work-related phone call.  When I came back to the car, I noticed the unhappy expression on his face.  Here’s some bad news, he began.  Uh oh – bad news is never good, least of all when you’re hundreds of miles from home.  The front tire on the Excursion is about to blow, he explained.  Yikes!  We’ll have to get two new tires on the front before we go on to Midland, he finished.  Whoa!  Guess what time it was?  Go ahead, guess.  Ding, ding, ding – you’re right!  It was 5:23 p.m., so of course no tire stores were open.  Except the Wal Mart, which was open and thankfully, close by.  Unfortunately, they didn’t carry the 10-ply tires our truck requires.  But they were kind enough to put on our spare tire so DH wouldn’t get all sweaty and gross.  And fortunately, our spare tire was in almost new condition.  We were on our way again in a little over an hour.

You know how when you were a kid and you decided to walk to that point on the horizon to see what was there?  The closer you thought you should be getting, the farther away that point on the horizon actually seemed?  Yeah, that’s what traveling across west Texas is like, y’all.  It’s flat, man.  And I’m from Kansas – I know what flat is about.  Texas is flat flat.  And big.  Huge.  Goes on forever.  We finally got to our hotel in Midland around midnight and when we straggled in the sweet desk clerk took one look at us and said, “Boy, you guys look exhausted.”  She felt so sorry for us that she upgraded us to a suite.  Too bad we were too tired to enjoy it because it was really swanky.  We took pictures of the glassed in shower and plush living room to show the kids – why let them think our trip was less fun than theirs, right?

The next morning, after a fair nights’ sleep (I never sleep well in hotels), a luxurious shower and a nice hot breakfast, we drove down the street to a tire store my husband picked out of the yellow pages.  As it turns out, these guys were ah-mazing.  They had tires that almost exactly matched the new rear tires we’d had put on a couple weeks previous*, charged us a lot less than those other tires had cost and didn’t even make us unhitch the trailer to mount them!  They just pulled the truck into the bay, changed those tires out, re-installed the spare in the back and had us on our way in less than an hour!  Midland was looking up.

*(A few weeks ago, my husband gave me the gift of taking me to a large flea market in the City.  On the way, we had a rear tire go flat on this same truck and we had to stop at a small town Farmer’s Co-op to get two new tires on the rear.  In retrospect, we probably should have had new tires put on the front as well, but hindsight is 20/20, right?  It seemed like a bad cosmic joke, though, that once again we were away from home and had to buy tires.  Our regular tire guy isn’t going to be happy with us … )

After the tire store, we drove to the auction yard to get the new truck.  Now, before I go much further,  I’ll mention that we were pulling a car trailer we borrowed from my cousin to tow the new truck home.  The auction people said it was locked in 4 wheel drive, which was the reason it was such a sweet bargain.  My husband wasn’t worried about that – he thought he knew what the problem was and said it would be a simple and inexpensive fix once we got home.  Cool.

They brought the truck around and we loaded it up.  It was a good looking vehicle – really muscular and tough … just like my husband.  wink, wink  And, as it turned out, also really heavy.  Really heavy.  As in, this truck is too heavy for the trailer because now the fenders of the trailer are going to rub against the wheels.  I did not want to have to stop somewhere else along the way home and buy two tires for the trailer, people.  So.  We were really in a pickle.  How do we get this darn truck home when we can’t drive it and it’s too heavy for the trailer?  Well, the solution was that we were going to have to hire someone to load it up and tow it home.  Wha???  Ugh.

While my better half was turning the air blue, if you know what I mean, and unloading the truck from the trailer, a miraculous thing happened.  It disengaged from 4WD, just. like. that.  (And I do mean a Miracle from God, y’all, because this truck had been stuck in 4WD for over a year and someone was about at wits end with this trip.)  Woo and Hoo!  We drove it around a little while to make sure nothing else was wrong with it and when all was good we decided to drive that piece home.  Hubs thoughtfully moved the trailer to the new truck so he could pull it because I’m, um, uncomfortable, pulling a trailer – especially on the highway and through cities.  We were off!  Hallelujah!

We drove on.  And on.  And on.  Lord, Texas is BIG.  And every time we stopped to get fuel or pee, we had to leave the new truck running.  Like, we couldn’t turn it off or it might not start up again.  You see, apparently, because it had been sitting and not driven for over a year, the batteries weren’t fully charged and we’d forgotten to pack jumper cables.  It really wasn’t a big deal, but by the time we finally made it out to the Oklahoma border, it was 6:00 p.m., we’d been driving since 10:00 a.m. and home was still a good 4 or 5 hours away.  I was Tired.

I was a little afraid to go on driving because I tend to get very drowsy after 7:00 and I sure didn’t want to fall asleep at the wheel.  I (half-jokingly) said to my husband, “Let’s just stay overnight here and finish the drive tomorrow.”  I was a little shocked when he agreed.  Readily.  Seems I wasn’t the only one who was Tired.

He has this really handy app on his phone that finds hotels near us where we can use our rewards card, so he made a quick reservation and off we went.  The hotel was nice and cool and they, again, upgraded us to a suite.  (Maybe we just look like suite people?  I don’t know and really don’t care because this place was p.l.u.s.h.)  There was a T.V. in our bathroom, y’all.  And that bathroom was as big as our bedroom at home.  There was a fancy-pants glass shower and a whirlpool tub.  A whirlpool tub!  You can bet whatever you’re comfortable with that we were in that thing later, soaking and almost falling asleep.  Ha!  I bet you thought there were going to be sexy fun times, didn’t you?  Did you miss the whole ‘driving across a state bigger than Jupiter and being Tired’ thing?  Well, anyway, the suite was sweet.

The next morning, we got an early start because we decided to stop in Enid on the way home and get our new car.  The trailer wasn’t being used and we thought that, since were a day behind, we’d save ourselves an extra trip.  We did make it to Enid by noon, got our car and made it home by early afternoon.

Home has never looked so good.  Seriously, I know I complain a lot about how much I want a new house and all the things that bug me about our current abode, but I was SO happy to see that place!  I was so happy to be home, in fact, that I didn’t leave it again for over a week.  Didn’t set a foot off the place until the girls had bugged me so relentlessly to go to the Library and Post Office (one was expecting her newest teen magazine issue) that I couldn’t ignore them any longer.  And then it was with grudging reluctance that I ventured the 10 miles into town.  And right back home again.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I did have to take our son to the orthodontist a couple days after we got back, but then, after that, I stayed home, home, home.

Well, that almost wraps up the tale of Daddy and Mama Dog’s Sort of Excellent Adventure.  There’s just a little more to add, but I think I’m going to keep you in suspense until next time.  In the mean time …

Love & Blessings

Farm Mama

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