Our Trip (Continued . . . Again)

Originally, I had planned out a route back home that would take us to some interesting places. I actually had two plans before we left, one for if Sam didn't make it to our vacation and one if he did. The first was far more kid oriented than the second.

Despite all my planning, we decided to stick to I-95 because of the rumored gas shortages. We'd be far more likely to find gasoline at the larger stations along major roads, so we felt that it was much better to be safe than to be stuck in the middle of nowhere. . . again.

So, we let the GPS system (which Sam had in Baton Rouge and brought back with him) guide us to I-95 in a sort of round about way. We had left the vacation house around 2:30 in the afternoon and by 7:00 Sam started to suspect that something was wrong. There was an odd film of something on the back windows. He mentioned it to me and I got that sinking feeling again. I'd seen the same thing when the hose burst on the way down just a week ago.

We pulled into a station (Not too far north of Dunn, by the way. Much too close for my comfort to my previous experience.) and Sam checked underneath the car. There was a leak, but it wasn't from the same area. The hose was fine, but something else was dreadfully wrong.

Smart guy that he is, he pulled the van over by the curb at the station (which had an unusually large paved area around it) and pulled the drivers side front wheel up on the curb as a sort of jack. He shimmied under the van to get a good look at what might be wrong.

The "front seal" was leaking. Dripping. Not too bad, but enough to cause a little trouble. (That's a direct quote from Sam, by the way. I have no idea what I'm talking about!) Sam was pretty confident that we could limp the van straight home if we stopped frequently to check the fluid and top it off. We had a whole case of fluid anyway, so why not!

We hopped back on the road and continued up the state a little further. By 11:00 we were beat and we found a hotel (a really nice Holiday Inn Express!) to stay in for the night. (I think we were in Virginia at this point, but I really can't remember) We had a fantastic complimentary breakfast the next morning and we got back on the road again, feeling pretty confident that we could make it all the way to New Jersey.

Sam picked up some stuff to try that was supposed to help stop leaks in transmissions. He laughed when he bought it because this was just not the kind of situation they were thinking of when they made this stuff, but he figured it might at least help a little. When he went to put it in, though, there was still lots of fluid, so there was no room to use it.

Just an hour or so later, there was room. He put the stop-leak in with a little regular fluid and we got back on the highway. We had to stop at the next exit, which was a tiny little rest stop, and when Sam said "I'm sorry, honey" I knew we were done for. Again.