What Happens in Vegas Gets Blogged About
After spending a wonderful week in Salt Lake City, Utah, I started the drive back to Ridgecrest. To break up the drive and give my leg a break, I stopped at my friend's house in St George for the night. We had dinner and a fun time hanging out.
I got up early Saturday morning to beat construction and concert (EDC) traffic on the i-15 through Las Vegas. I had made plans to stop at my friend Emily's house to see her new kitchen remodel and was about 20 min away from her place when my car lost power. I had been using cruise control so when it turned off and I couldn't accelerate to keep my speed, I knew something was pretty wrong.
(the only photos I have from this part were what I posted on Snapchat...)
I pulled over to the side of the road and called Tony. He had me check the battery cables (I'd just gotten a brand new battery at Walmart the day before AND a car inspection check at Les Schwab the day before that where everything checked out fine (minus the battery...)
I called our insurance but we didn't have any roadside assistance. It's a long story as to why. So then I messaged Emily to see if her husband could come help and she and her husband both headed my way with some gas. Tony jumped in the car and started the 3.5-hour drive to Las Vegas. Meanwhile, I kept praying nobody would hit my car. I see stories like that in the news often, so terrible!

High-Pressure Fuel Pump
Ugh, double ugh because it turned into a very expensive repair. More than I've ever spent on a car repair in my life. I am pretty sure. But we had no good way to get the car to Ridgecrest where Tony could fix it himself so we were at the mercy of the shop. The shop seemed confident in being able to fix the issue and didn't charge us to expedite the part and even came down a little on the price of the pump. They also needed to replace the spark plugs and do an oil change.
Went to a park to hang out and try and clean up the car since we'd moved everything from the Hyundai Accent to the Ford Escape kind of quickly.





Here are the ones I noticed ~
- The car could have died anywhere on my trip, scariest place would have been the Virgin River Gorge in Arizona, with its hills and lack of cell service
- I was able to safely pull over enough to be out of the way of passing traffic and most cars moved into the lane farther from me which helped me feel safer
- I was a mile from an exit and could have walked there if I needed to. It was Ridgecrest windy outside though so I am glad I didn't have to do that
- I was able to get on a road alongside the freeway where I didn't have to drive as fast and it got me where I needed to be
- Emily and Scott were available. Scott is working on getting his own plumbing business started so his schedule is one he can set himself and they were more than willing to come help me out + bring some gas for my car in case that was the problem
- Emily, for thinking of a shop to take my car to so I didn't have to spend any time at all looking up shops and calling around
- Tony had the day off from work because he is working 4 - 10's now and was able to jump in the car to come help me
- Emily allowed me to stay at her house and then for Tony & I both to stay the night so we didn't have to pay for a hotel or sleep in the car
- The shop was able to get the part tons faster than we thought, Friday afternoon! and was able to do the work so we could pick up the car in the morning instead of waiting until 1pm on Saturday
I will add, that it was a bit unfortunate I missed a fun craft party I had been invited to on Friday evening, and Tony & I missed a ward service activity we had talked about going to on Saturday morning.
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