My Nightmare Road Trip From Indiana to Idaho

When I found out I would be moving to Boise, I realized I was in store for a long road trip ahead of me. I’ve always been someone down for road trips. Weekend getaways to Louisville, Michigan, and Chicago were the norm for me back in Indiana. However 4 hours compared to 27 hours was a different level of road tripping that I wasn’t used to. I admit, I definitely underestimated my trip. 

I planned to stop in Lincoln, NE, Rock Springs, WY and Salt Lake City, UT. I only successfully made it to Lincoln. After that everything just went really downhill. I was just outside of Cheyenne Wyoming when my coolant temperature freaked out on me. Without any real warning, the thermostat shot up to the top. As quickly as it shot up, it shot back down to zero. My car had completely run out of coolant. My initial thought was I had a leak. Which was a pretty good guess for someone with my limited car knowledge. When I say “limited car knowledge,” I mean I didn’t even know where I was supposed to pour the coolant into. So I immediately called up my dad of course.

Miraculously, I was able to pull over at a gas station and buy coolant. I filled up the coolant tank but I was hesitant to get back on the road. Also, miraculously, I was only a couple of miles from an Autozone so I drove there in efforts to find out the real issue. The wonderful lady at the desk knew I had no idea what the hell I was talking about so she was gracious and super helpful. This whole story is just a miraculous piece of work because when I was walking in, I guess a local mechanic was walking out. She asked if he had time to help me fix my car. They concluded that it was actually my thermostat which caused the coolant to basically evaporate. The mechanic said he would help me so I drove to his place. I know, I know. This story could’ve gone really bad and I wasn’t in an ideal situation whatsoever but I knew this man wasn’t a weirdo and he was a legit mechanic. A couple hours later my car was good to go. Or so I thought.

I got back on the road the next morning and drove 6.5 hours only for my car to go literally haywire outside of Tremonton, Utah. Out of nowhere when I was switching lines I lost traction. I had every message pop up on my dash: service transmission, dynamic steering torque service required, service ESC system, service electronic parking brake, and last but not least, service engine. WHAT THE HELL. There was no way my entire car was just starting to fail on me. Thankfully, I was able to pull off on the last exit on I-15 before driving another 50 miles to the nearest town with nothing in between. I was in the wild, wild west and boy was it wild. As I’m trying to figure out what just caused my entire car to have a meltdown, I had one myself. I cried for a couple minutes then got myself together. Oh and of course it was Sunday so no mechanics were open. Here’s another miracle though. There was a 4-star Hampton hotel just down the road so I stayed there for the night. I went to a Jeep dealership the next morning for them to tell me nothing was actually wrong with my car other than a daylight light had burned out, sparked, and caused my computer system to malfunction which explained all those messages. A few hours later I was back on the road once again and this time I made it to Boise in one functioning piece.