Best Laid Plans

It has been a week of ups and downs, breakdowns and fixes, sorrow and excitement!

Getting ready for my dream trip to Newfoundland I had my week planned out so everything would get done and I could still breathe. Newfoundland had changed the procedure for single vaxxed folks so no test required! Woohoo! That was a great start! I was waiting for a few things from Amazon for the van but sadly they did not arrive in time! Darn!

Well you know what they say about best laid plans!

Sunday and Monday were family days. Spending time with my kids and my grandkids before saying good bye for a month. Sunday, I headed toward my daughters to spend the night there and go for a picnic the next day after picking up my youngest. Stopping at Walmart, then a garbage can to get rid of my garbage I noticed my alternator was not charging. The battery light was on and the amperage gauge read uh oh!

I had about a 20 minute drive to my daughters from where I was so I took the chance she would make it. After all I have been here before. Turn everything off electrical. No radio, air or fans, and definitely no lights. I turned the house battery switch to off so the alternator would only have to work to build the energy in the engine batteries and not the house. When I got to my daughters I would be able to plug in and not worry about losing power to the house.

Calling Tom and showing him what it was doing we decided that I would wait until after the holiday Monday and try to get it to his house.

Monday was a beautiful day at the beach with my daughter, my 3 grandkids and my granddog. My granddog is a 90 lb Rottwieler named Doug. I will tell you I am not much of a water person. It is not that I cannot swim or am afraid of the water it just does not excite me. I do not even own a bathing suit. I will take the dog in to about knee deep but that’s as far as I go. Doug loves the water and his favorite pass time is chasing and biting the offending waves coming at him. I have to make sure I have good footing when in the water with him. Standing in the water I just turned for a moment to wave at my grandson and you guessed it, he jumped after a wave pulling me backwards into the water and proceeding to drag me through the waves. Now who was at the end of the leash. As my daughter and grandsons laughed hysterically Doug realized I had fell and came up beside me so I could lean on him to get up. I could have drowned!!! Hahaha! OK maybe not the water was after all only knee deep. Lol!

Tuesday was soon here and I still had plenty to do before leaving on Friday and I had a broken van. Off to Tom’s to see if we could get this fixed and figure out what the problem was. He found a wire had shorted itself out and actually burned onto one of the mounts which shorted out the alternator. Off to the parts store to get another alternator and before the end of the day we had it fixed. Well he had it fixed. Lol! He is amazing, not sure what I would do without him.

Next I had a stop at Diane’s and then off to Mike’s to put the other seat in and fix the support on the step. As I was rounding the corner to his place, the amperage gauge dropped and the battery light came on!! NO WAY!!! It cannot be the alternator. It has not even been a whole 24 hours. I pulled into Mike’s (another person I would not know what I would do without) and called Tom. He could not believe it. After I was done here I would head back to his place.

Mike put a charger on the battery because it was at least an hour and half drive from his place to Tom’s. That is a long time to run without an alternator. I was pushing my luck for sure but if she did die at least I have CAA so he was just a tow away. The seats fit beautifully and the step is now much more stable.

Arriving again at Tom’s he could not understand why the alternator went out. Surely it could not be another alternator. He checked the wires and grounds and all seemed to be working perfectly. Checked the alternator and found a fault in the building of it. It was a bad alternator and thankfully the warranty covered a new one. He put it in and she is running perfectly. Pheww.

A few more last things to do including a lunch with my youngest daughter and I was ready to go. Kim had decided to come with me and that made the trip all that more exciting! Look out Newfoundland here we come with a van event first! Oh woohoo!

Thursday I got a call and some news. Someone very close to me, someone who has been by my side all my life and that I always looked up to had a time limit. Friday was spent with burgers and hugs and promises of whale pictures. Although we will still have some time together and I will make the most of it, it reminds me we are only given moments. Use them wisely!

Friday night Kim and I hit the road! What a wonderful feeling, the wheels rolling down the highway looking forward to a wonderful adventure. Late Friday night we hit Kingston a little tired. We still had 7 hours to the van event and 2 days to the ferry. Found a room at the Best Western. What a very cute hotel. The outside was done like a log cabin with comfy rooms and a warm atmosphere inside. It was a lovely stay.

We arrived in St. Patrice Quebec to a warm welcome and spent Saturday night laughing and hugging our friends.

As you read this we will be on the road through eastern Quebec to an Island adventure!

Thanks for coming along on my Chipmunk Adventure.

See you next week!

🐿