The $200+ Sunday Drive

OK, so I am in trouble because I have not blogged about this yet. One of the things Andrew and I like to do is to just go out and drive around somewhere we have not been before. We often do this with Don and Nancy (his parents) because they enjoy this, also. The Sunday before last was one of those perfect days for a Sunday drive (which we often do on Saturday). The sun was out, the skies were clear and the temperature was perfect. We just could not see spending the day inside. So, we called them up on our way home from church and arranged to meet them at their house. We also offered to take our Jeep because they drive most of the time and take the cost of the gas.
We headed out towards California, MO and the sights were beautiful! There were rolling hills and farms and like I said before, the sky was amazing. We also saw some pretty interesting people in Lupus, a "town," if you can call it that, down on the river bottom. We were thoroughly enjoying ourselves. We ended up on a gravel road called Gooseberry Hollow and then one called Cheese Factory Road. When we pulled back onto a paved road, we heard an awful noise- we had a flat tire! Unfortunately, we were on a hill and there was a drop off on both sides- nowhere to pull over. So, we drove to the top of the hill where people could see us and there was a little flat spot to pull off onto. We all got out, and sure enough, the back left tire was completely blown out. So, Don and Andrew went to work trying to change the tire. But one of the lug nuts had been cross-threaded and they were having to be quite forceful to get it off. Finally, they were able to get the flat tire off. Here lies the next problem. We learned exactly how much give the suspension has for off-roading! As the Jeep was jacked up (on a hill, mind you) the wheel kept dropping. When they were ready to put the inflated tire on, they realized they needed to jack it up higher. As they started doing so, Nancy and I noticed that the Jeep was "leaning". We started yelling, telling them to get out of the way because it was going to crush them! They hurriedly put the flat back on, lowered the Jeep, and repositioned the jack in a better place. Finally, they were able to get the good tire on (albeit a low tire short one lug nut). That pretty much ended our adventure. We returned to Don and Nancy's house where we aired up the tire.
Monday, we took the Jeep in to get a new tire. We were discussing how much we thought the tire would cost. Remember, we have only had small cars with standard sized tires before and this was the first time we have had to do anything with the Jeep tires. Andrew walked back out the the car slightly paler than when he went in. Not $120 or $130 like we had discussed, but $163 to replace the flat tire. We laughingly suggested that maybe we could ask if they could just patch our flat tire!
Will this end our random driving excursions? No! We will just try to be more aware of how the car feels when we are on those gravel roads next time! I mean, come on, we never made it to California. We will have to go back again, sometime.

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