For those of you following our Alcan Highway Adventure on here we are on day three and are in the great state of Nevada, yes that's right folks, Nevada, Las Vegas to be exact. You are correct this is NOT where we wanted to be. According to the plan we are suppose to be across the Canadian border today heading across the Yukon soon. So what happened?

Wednesday started out great. We were ahead of schedule, got to base and got Mike "final-outed" got the truck and trailer weighed and we're on our way north with lots of happy fairwells and good riddance echoing in our car! We were so happy to be leaving, maybe too happy. About fifty miles into the trip we were going up a hill and the truck were going about 60 and it's not shifting and not shifting and then it started making a knocking noise and well we just went down hill from there. Mike pulled off the road popped the hood and gives me a look that says, "honey we aren't going anywhere" and very promptly my stomach hits the floor...this is so not good!

We called a tow truck and they could tow the blazer but the trailer was going to be 350$. Nope not going to happen. We were going to leave it and my sister in law volunteered to sit with it (she lives in Vegas) but when the tow truck got there Marc said he'd tow it for free so we didn't run the risk of losing our stuff. So about 4 hours after the initial break down we got back to base, dropped the car and trailer at the hobby shop (car shop), ordered an engine (thanks Mom and Dad), and checked into temporary housing. Also in these four hours my brother in law (David) drove up from AZ in the jeep and then Alan and Lauri drove up in another car. So we had transportation and extra hands to help, though everything was on hold until Thursday morning.

It's small but it's a kitchen.

Our 1 bedroom efficiency apt. at Nellis.

Yesterday morning Mike and David got started on pulling out all the mechanical things that need pulled out to get to the engine and got the engine pulled as well. Great progress for one day. Lauri and I did lots of running around and got parts for the guys as well as food and other things that we needed so that we could live in temporary housing for a few days.

Pulling out the radiator
Making progress, so glad that base has a shop with lifts! Makes this job so much easier!

This morning Mike is picking up the new engine and is hoping to have it installed and maybe we can be on the road by Sunday morning.

We are lucky that this happened while we were still close to town as another 300-400 miles down the road could have made it a major disaster! We are also very lucky to have family that can help us out!