The Trip to Nashville: Day 2

Start: Howell Home, Hermiston, OR, 10:00AM

We slept in a little this morning, then took showers, packed the cooler, and left the Howells. They were gone to work by the time we woke up, so we didn't really get to say goodbye. :(
We stopeed at a Walmart, bought a book to write about the journey, and some envelopes to mail our rent deposit to the disciples Divinity House at Vanderbilt.
We got to the town of North Powder and the van started to make funny noises. We pulled over and Jarid put two quarts of oil in it because the oil pressure was low, but it still sounded funny. It was whining and banging loudly.

We went to a repair shop that apparently no longer does repairs, so they referred us to another repair shop called, no joke, Knuckle-Busters. They, of course, referred us to yet another repair shop 20 miles away in Baker City. By this time the car could barely pick up speed as we reentered the highway. Naturally we were in a Roaming area so we couldn't make any calls. :) The engine temperature slowly started creeping higher as we limped along. We dropped down from 55 to 45, then 40, then 35 until the temperature was almost in the red. Fortunately there was a rest stop about a mile ahead, we were still 11 miles from Baker City. We waited there for about 20 minutes until the van had a chance to cool down, then got back on the road. We went 30 on the side of the road with the hazards on until we pulled into this other repair shop, Paul's Transmission and repair.

Keeping with tradition, they referred us to another repair shop down the road. Finally, at Grumpy's Auto Repair (laugh and you die!) we found a guy who was really helpful (almost making up for the 19 other repair nimrods...almost). He said the options were a) buy a new engine and have him put it in for $4000, b) buy a used engine and have him put it in for $2615, c) trade the van in and/or sell it to a wrecking yard to then buy a new car altogether.
After we got ahold of Todd and Beth through Nextel's Direct Connect (thank the Lord!) and told them what had happened they offered to bring us their old van. We and got ahold of a guy named Frank at BC's Auto Salvage. He gave us $100 for the van and here we sit in a public library waiting for Todd and Beth. Their ETA is 11:00PM.

Will we ever leave Oregon? Only time will tell...

The Trip to Nashville: Day 1

Start: McCool's House Eugene, OR, 03:00 PM

We ate lunch at Chicken Bonz in Springfield with some of our family and our pastor's family, then took off for a gas station on the way out of town. Then we were off, up I-5 to the I-205 and then to I-84. We stopped in Troutdale for a potty break and got some post cards. We had a brilliant idea; to send postcards to our parents frequently throughout the trip. After a quick photo-op stop at Multnomah Falls,

we continued on to Hermiston. Arriving at 7pm we had dinner with Stephen and Jubilee. Jub made an amazing dessert of whipped cream, apples and snickers bars. We ate dessert while watching the movie "Obsessed." It was fun to meet up with them and to see their house. Not to mention stay in a home for the night. The route we took looks pretty ridiculous from an aerial view, especially if you know our destination is Tennessee, but we needed to drop off the truck in Eugene, OR, felt we really needed to help out at camp (they were understaffed as it was!) and really wanted to see Jubilee and Stephen before we left.