While we loved our time on vacation, we did not love the trip home. I knew it was twelve hours of drive time and there is no way around that. However, it took us nearly 15 hours to get home...ugh!
We were up at 5:30 the morning of our departure. My mom and Robert were flying home so they left the rental house before 7:00. Mom had been awake since 2:30 and she was antsy to get moving...even though their flight didn't leave until afternoon. It was a two hour drive to the airport though, and she didn't want to take any chances. We left shortly after 7:00 and had to return the keys and make one last walk to the ocean. We were officially on the road by 7:30. We stopped shortly after 9:00 for breakfast and that took 25 minutes...even though we were the second car in the drive-thru! Had we not already paid we would've driven on, but once they have your money you kind of want your food! Traffic was so heavy that we had many times of stop-and-go along the interstate, and at one point we even had to wait in line to park at a rest stop. I began driving in western VA, and I noticed the engine kept "missing" as I was driving along. Andrew resumed driving and I could still feel it. He noticed it as well and we were concerned. We stopped to get gas and he decided to use premium gas just in case something had gotten into the lines. The good news is that got better. The bad news is that lights began to come on all over the dashboard and the cruise control wouldn't work. This terrified me as we were entering the mountains (although we wouldn't use the cruise there anyway). I was convinced something awful was going to happen and we'd be stuck. My anxiety was pretty high.
Late afternoon we decided that since we were getting good gas mileage, and everything seemed to be running, we were going to go as far as we could go. My thought was that if we made it close enough to home it would be easier for someone to help us out because I was not at all convinced the van was going to re-start if we had to turn it off. We were lucky that we had plenty of snacks and gas, and no one had to use the restroom. Once we were within 100 miles of home, I relaxed and we stopped...and were very grateful when the car started again!
We kind of joked about what a ridiculous trip it had been. Everything was taking longer than we had anticipated including the fast food stops (which were NOT fast). We were less than 20 miles from home and turned onto a state route...where we promptly had to wait in line at a sobriety check point. At that point it was just comical. Obviously were permitted to go through and we finally made it home that evening. My mom and Robert of course, had a much less dramatic and eventful trip home and were sound asleep by the time we were pulling into our driveway. Because we had my mom's bags and I needed to do an early Sunday morning exchange for Robert, we had to unload the van that evening and we all tumbled into bed very late and very tired.
I was so grateful things had worked out though. We are having the van checked out and they suspect the "missing" of the engine was caused by bad gas and the other problem sounds like a sensor. I am so grateful it doesn't sound as though it is anything more expensive, and I'm so glad we were able to make our trip safely!
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