Of iron ships and wooden (headed) men...

Click on the picture to see a slideshow of the scenery we encountered between Fillmore and Kanab, UT


Today was a test of mettle: ours and Sadie's. We left our lovely little campsite at Wagons West in Fillmore this morning and crossed the street to the local Shell station. Going in the driveway, I heard a little scrape, which I assumed was the bottom of the tow hitch. I was intent on fueling, and kind of forgot about the incident.

We headed for Kanab on I-15. When we got to Utah route 20 we exited to head for Utah route 89, which is a scenic byway into Kanab. As we started to ascend the pass, Sadie was seeming pretty gutless, so I pulled over to check and make sure the toad had not somehow locked up its brakes. Good thing I checked. It seems that, when I bottomed out at the Shell station, I pulled the power cord for the lights on the back of the toad loose from the socket where it plugs into Sadie's rear bumper.

The plug on the Sadie end of the cord had been dragging for 68 miles and was sanded off at a perfect 45 degree angle. The cord was slightly chewed up, presumably from dragging, too. There was nothing I could do to remedy that situation on the side of the road, because I needed a new plug.

So, we plodded on; and I do mean plodded. I had no idea where we were going or what we would encounter. Sadie inched her way up a grade that must have been at least 6%. At times she could only muster 30 mph. In her defense, we started up this hill from about 6,000 feet elevation: not a good altitude for an unsupercharged gasser. The sign at the summit said, "7,960 ft." I gave Sadie a pat. She had struggled, but she never complained. Her engine temp stayed below 220 degrees, and the transmission temperature stayed below 200 degrees.

Well, as you know if you have ever driven a heavy, slightly underpowered vehicle over a mountain pass, getting to the top is the easy part. On the other side of the summit was an 8% grade! Yikes!! I slowed to a crawl and put Sadie in 1st gear. We slowly descended the grade, which had some hairpin turns rated at 25 mph. I tried to stay off the brake pedal. Gradually, the 8% grade gave way to a more gentle slope. And at last we descended into the most beautiful valley.

We continued on, but all the while, I was torn between praise for Sadie and self flagellation for my cockiness in not having checked what that scrape was all about. We drove on another 20 miles to a nice little town called Panquitsch. As we rolled into town we saw an auto repair shop, and we stopped to ask where we might get a new plug for our cord. The gent in the shop directed us to the NAPA auto parts store 4 blocks down.

We found the NAPA store and went in to see if by some outside chance, they might have a plug that would fit our setup. Well, it turns out, the gent from the auto repair shop had preceded us to NAPA and helped me look for the part. When we didn't find one, he checked with Mat, and Mat had one in the back, which he sold me for $5. I ran back to Sadie and started working on repairing the cord, only to find that it required a very tiny Phillips screwdriver. So, back to NAPA, and another $4 later, I was able to fix the cord. It took a total of about 1/2 hour. Thank you NAPA, thank you unknown auto repair guy, thank you Mat, and thank you Jesus!

The rest of the trip was beautiful, uneventful, and much less stressful.

The moral of the story: When I assume, I make an "ass" of "u" and "me." In this case, however, "u" were totally not involved, so guess who the "ass" was!

Thank God for a quick, easy and inexpensive fix...and for yet another lesson learned!