Enough adventure already

Well, the outdoor adventure part has been great. More national parks than I can count, l lost track at around 8. Plenty of mountains. So much wildlife we stop taking pictures. But geez, enough with the breakdowns already. Here we are in Billings Montana after the van broke down again. That rebuilt transmission we had done in Fairbanks gave out as we neared Billings. We were just driving along and we heard a loud squealing sound. Then there was no power. Called our towing club, they checked around Billings and found a company that has tow trucks and specializes in repairing transmissions. They do a lot of work on RVs. The driver usually drives the big wrecker, the kind that tows semis. He was filling in for a guy who was sick and was running the midsized truck that day. In the last month he towed in two big class A RVs that had less than 10,000 miles. They apparently work on so many RVs that they have installed AC outlets on one end of one of their lots. We stayed in the van that night, yesterday I guess. I am starting to loose track of time here. They got the van in this morning, found out the overdrive planetary gears went out. This time they are going to "remanufacture" the tranny not just "rebuild" it. They say they are installing heavy duty this and steel rather than aluminium that. Yada, yada. They even showed me the nice heavy duty torque converter plate they were putting on. He took me back in the shop and showed me how they test all the valves and if any leak at all, they re-machine the body, put in over size valves, more yada yada. All of this really means a lot more money. But he tells me this will make sure the tranny will not break down again and it will be strong enough to pull Mt McKinley over a couple feet.

We are sitting in a nice little hotel in Billlings. Drove around in a rented car today ($29.95/day), shopped for about 3 hours at the largest "antique" store I have ever seen. Even Kim said she was done with antiquing for a while. The hotel has a pool, hot tub and sauna. Went out to eat and now we are just sitting here watching TV in the room. Tomorrow they are supposed to be done with the van. We will be sitting in the waiting room at the repair shop all day. We should be back to Winona Friday....... maybe