God's Fingerprints on our Road Trip: For those of my friends who missed it before: "Miracles are not always visible to the naked eye, but those who live by faith can see them clearly. Living by faith, rather than sight, enables you to see My Glory." -Dear Jesus by Sarah Young, p. 24
Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” -John 11:40
Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” -John 11:40
I've shared some of this with several, but want to try to record the amazement of our safety and protection on the trip from which Mary Lou, Midget and I have just returned. Our log book documents that we traveled a total of 6,692 miles in a trip listing 3 weeks and 3 days. It took us from Oceanside CA on the west coast to within an hour or so of Myrtle Beach, SC on the east coast. If you look at a map, we pretty much followed I-40 for the outbound part and I-20 on the return. (I'll see if Mary Lou can help me print a map.) We literally did not close that loop until we got on 15-South in Temecula, CA -- about 20 miles from Escondido.
The morning of our departure was very foggy but as soon as we hit the freeway, the ceiling lifted and visibility cleared. We saw pockets of fog in the valleys, but nothing to obscure driver safety.
Our first overnight was in Flagstaff, AZ (it was cold!) and the second in Tucumcari, NM. We left NM in the breaking dawn and saw sunrise from TX. As we were leaving Amarillo, we narrowly escaped being sideswiped by an 18-wheeler. That driver put on his signal and immediately began moving his rig into our lane (apparently without looking). Since his trailer was equipped with one of those "1-800 how is my driving?" numbers, I notified his dispatcher. Quite some while later, as we were approaching Oklahoma City, we had a similar experience...a truck just started moving into our lane. Then I noticed the brand (the same as in Amarillo). Then I glanced at the vehicle number...the same as in Amarillo! Then I hit re-dial and spoke to his dispatcher again.
While we were 3 days in Claremore, OK with friends, our accommodations were in a nearby Microtel (which we enjoyed). The week after we left, a tornado came through...right over that Microtel. We didn't hear of damage to that building, but the storm took part of the roof from our friends' house, as well as taking out their back fence and destroying the trampoline in their backyard (which was weighted with 400 pounds of sand!) A piece of their trampoline went through the roof of their neighbor's house. Being California girls, we have a healthy respect for earthquakes, but tornados are terrifying.
We were 4 amazing days in Branson, enjoying spring in the Ozarks and visiting Mountain Home AR, Carthage MO, and Eureka Springs AR. Followed by a night in Nashville TN (literally...a NIGHT. No shows!) and the next afternoon and evening in Gatlinburg, TN.
While starting the engine in Mountain Home, the van made a strange sound. One of those curious things. The next morning Mary Lou greeted me with the news that she had heard that sound again...and possibly the starter was going out. Great! With a 2-hour time difference, it was too early to call California, but as soon as I thought they MIGHT be open, I called Honda of Escondido for advice. We were headed to Springfield that morning (enroute to Carthage) and planned to pick up some maps from AAA (as my faith in GPS continues to diminish). Lo and behold! a half block from the Starbucks store was a Honda dealership, so we stopped. The service advisor there told me what California later reconfirmed...that there is no test for a failing starter; unless we were able to recreate the problem, they couldn't diagnose it. And that replacing a starter was expensive enough that we wouldn't want to do it as a "rule out" procedure. And furthermore... starters in Odyssey vans have problems so rarely that it might take a day or two to procure the part. That was one of the days on which my devotional reading was specifically about trusting...and I decided that's what we had to do. And we are still.
My next story is about leaving Gatlinburg TN at 5:30 a.m. It was pitch dark and a little foggy up there in the Smokey Mountains. The map said turn right...and that took us on an increasingly windy road that climbed (it seemed to the stars, since they were so clear). The "winding" became switchbacks in which it seemed the tailgate was still in one turn while the nose was into the next... with tall trees on both sides. When we lost the signal for our XM radio, it was a bit spooky. Then our GPS said to make a left turn. Sure enough... there was a sign (someone painted a board on a wooden stick) that said I-40 > so we turned. In completing the turn from the highway, we could not see the roadway in front of us; it fell away that steeply. So, we started down...and the pavement quickly became a gravel road but it was too narrow to turn around so we kept going. After what seemed like a long time (but was probably only a couple of long minutes) I saw a light down the hill... which was an encouragment that there WAS civilization ahead. In the yard of that house was a big storage trailer which could in no way have come down the road we just did, so it seemed that things were going to improve...and in fact within a very short while we came to a stop sign which gave access to the interstate. Whew!!
About noon we reached Moorsville NC and despite our GPS sending us on a "D.U." tour (destination unknown).. we eventually reached Mike and Jan's place. The plan was for Mary Lou to stay a couple of days and then Jan would bring her to Fayetteville to meet up with me. That allowed me a bit of extra cuddle-with-the-baby time. So after lunch and oh! so many instructions and programming my phone and my GPS, etc. I set off by myself for Fayetteville. Now I'm a west-coast girl and out here highways with numbers have numbers. Back there they have names and you're just supposed to understand that they also have numbers... which isn't very reassuring. I'd been on my own for probably 10 minutes when I pulled into a parking lot to call for confirmation...the Moorsville Police Department. (That made me laugh).
Neither Mary Lou nor Jan were answering their phone. I'm sure they weren't expecting to hear from me so soon. So there I was. The electronic maps weren't working and I had no idea whether that street name corresponded with the state highway I was supposed to be following. It's was a curious thing... I wasn't sure I could even retrace my path the way I'd come...had no idea where I was supposed to go... but blessedly I wasn't anxious about it. Eventually Jan got my message and called...and I was right on course. Then I had a detour around an accident but eventually got back on the right course again after which the GPS started working again. The roads were 1-lane each way with no shoulders so about every mile I had to find a driveway to pull out so the backed up traffic could pass. The cars all seemed to drive faster than the posted limits...but I had no wish for a speeding ticket. Despite all of the adventure, I DID succeed in finding Val and Matt's place without additional coaching. Yay! me.
After we left Fayetteville we drove through South Carolina and Georgia into Alabama. Our target for that driving day was Fairfield AL (near Birmingham) but we didn't get quite that far. We'd run through one really heavy rain shower (about 15 minutes during which the wipers couldn't seem to keep up) and as it got dark and we were tired, we decided to find a place and call it a day. The place was Oxford AL where we checked into their last non-smoking room and had scarcely gotten our overnight stuff inside when the skies let down again. We sat in our beds and watched the tornado reports on the TV... in the area we would have been driving had we gone forward. Thank you, God!
By morning the rain had cleared and the air was fresh. We again headed toward Birmingham. Mary Lou had been very sick during the night; possibly some food poisoning. She slept most of the way through Alabama and Mississippi. As we were tooling along, I noted that the sensor was telling me it was time for an oil change in the van. I called my service advisor in Escondido to ask whether I could make it to Dallas since the car had been at the dealership there before (years ago). He messaged back that I should just look for a Honda dealer and get the oil changed; I would not make it to Dallas. As I closed the phone, and before I could really consider how to resolve the problem I noticed a large blue "H" alongside the road-- Freeway Honda in Birmingham. I hit the off ramp and was soon in their service drive. I explained that we were traveling and that I needed an oil change and asked how long it would take. They weren't too busy, he replied--30 minutes. So, Mary Lou sat in the customer lounge, I walked Midget, and they got the car serviced... and 45 minutes later we were driving out their gate with a clean report.
And on and on it goes. Thursday morning we left Phoenix AZ with virga above and a haboob blowing up from the south. I was concerned that travel through the desert might be dicey. There were black clouds to our north, west and south... but as we traveled, we watched the storm lift over us. There was the usual wind on the Whitewater grade outside of Palm Springs but we didn't encounter rain until we saw the "Escondido" sign!!
The morning of our departure was very foggy but as soon as we hit the freeway, the ceiling lifted and visibility cleared. We saw pockets of fog in the valleys, but nothing to obscure driver safety.
Our first overnight was in Flagstaff, AZ (it was cold!) and the second in Tucumcari, NM. We left NM in the breaking dawn and saw sunrise from TX. As we were leaving Amarillo, we narrowly escaped being sideswiped by an 18-wheeler. That driver put on his signal and immediately began moving his rig into our lane (apparently without looking). Since his trailer was equipped with one of those "1-800 how is my driving?" numbers, I notified his dispatcher. Quite some while later, as we were approaching Oklahoma City, we had a similar experience...a truck just started moving into our lane. Then I noticed the brand (the same as in Amarillo). Then I glanced at the vehicle number...the same as in Amarillo! Then I hit re-dial and spoke to his dispatcher again.
While we were 3 days in Claremore, OK with friends, our accommodations were in a nearby Microtel (which we enjoyed). The week after we left, a tornado came through...right over that Microtel. We didn't hear of damage to that building, but the storm took part of the roof from our friends' house, as well as taking out their back fence and destroying the trampoline in their backyard (which was weighted with 400 pounds of sand!) A piece of their trampoline went through the roof of their neighbor's house. Being California girls, we have a healthy respect for earthquakes, but tornados are terrifying.
We were 4 amazing days in Branson, enjoying spring in the Ozarks and visiting Mountain Home AR, Carthage MO, and Eureka Springs AR. Followed by a night in Nashville TN (literally...a NIGHT. No shows!) and the next afternoon and evening in Gatlinburg, TN.
While starting the engine in Mountain Home, the van made a strange sound. One of those curious things. The next morning Mary Lou greeted me with the news that she had heard that sound again...and possibly the starter was going out. Great! With a 2-hour time difference, it was too early to call California, but as soon as I thought they MIGHT be open, I called Honda of Escondido for advice. We were headed to Springfield that morning (enroute to Carthage) and planned to pick up some maps from AAA (as my faith in GPS continues to diminish). Lo and behold! a half block from the Starbucks store was a Honda dealership, so we stopped. The service advisor there told me what California later reconfirmed...that there is no test for a failing starter; unless we were able to recreate the problem, they couldn't diagnose it. And that replacing a starter was expensive enough that we wouldn't want to do it as a "rule out" procedure. And furthermore... starters in Odyssey vans have problems so rarely that it might take a day or two to procure the part. That was one of the days on which my devotional reading was specifically about trusting...and I decided that's what we had to do. And we are still.
My next story is about leaving Gatlinburg TN at 5:30 a.m. It was pitch dark and a little foggy up there in the Smokey Mountains. The map said turn right...and that took us on an increasingly windy road that climbed (it seemed to the stars, since they were so clear). The "winding" became switchbacks in which it seemed the tailgate was still in one turn while the nose was into the next... with tall trees on both sides. When we lost the signal for our XM radio, it was a bit spooky. Then our GPS said to make a left turn. Sure enough... there was a sign (someone painted a board on a wooden stick) that said I-40 > so we turned. In completing the turn from the highway, we could not see the roadway in front of us; it fell away that steeply. So, we started down...and the pavement quickly became a gravel road but it was too narrow to turn around so we kept going. After what seemed like a long time (but was probably only a couple of long minutes) I saw a light down the hill... which was an encouragment that there WAS civilization ahead. In the yard of that house was a big storage trailer which could in no way have come down the road we just did, so it seemed that things were going to improve...and in fact within a very short while we came to a stop sign which gave access to the interstate. Whew!!
About noon we reached Moorsville NC and despite our GPS sending us on a "D.U." tour (destination unknown).. we eventually reached Mike and Jan's place. The plan was for Mary Lou to stay a couple of days and then Jan would bring her to Fayetteville to meet up with me. That allowed me a bit of extra cuddle-with-the-baby time. So after lunch and oh! so many instructions and programming my phone and my GPS, etc. I set off by myself for Fayetteville. Now I'm a west-coast girl and out here highways with numbers have numbers. Back there they have names and you're just supposed to understand that they also have numbers... which isn't very reassuring. I'd been on my own for probably 10 minutes when I pulled into a parking lot to call for confirmation...the Moorsville Police Department. (That made me laugh).
Neither Mary Lou nor Jan were answering their phone. I'm sure they weren't expecting to hear from me so soon. So there I was. The electronic maps weren't working and I had no idea whether that street name corresponded with the state highway I was supposed to be following. It's was a curious thing... I wasn't sure I could even retrace my path the way I'd come...had no idea where I was supposed to go... but blessedly I wasn't anxious about it. Eventually Jan got my message and called...and I was right on course. Then I had a detour around an accident but eventually got back on the right course again after which the GPS started working again. The roads were 1-lane each way with no shoulders so about every mile I had to find a driveway to pull out so the backed up traffic could pass. The cars all seemed to drive faster than the posted limits...but I had no wish for a speeding ticket. Despite all of the adventure, I DID succeed in finding Val and Matt's place without additional coaching. Yay! me.
After we left Fayetteville we drove through South Carolina and Georgia into Alabama. Our target for that driving day was Fairfield AL (near Birmingham) but we didn't get quite that far. We'd run through one really heavy rain shower (about 15 minutes during which the wipers couldn't seem to keep up) and as it got dark and we were tired, we decided to find a place and call it a day. The place was Oxford AL where we checked into their last non-smoking room and had scarcely gotten our overnight stuff inside when the skies let down again. We sat in our beds and watched the tornado reports on the TV... in the area we would have been driving had we gone forward. Thank you, God!
By morning the rain had cleared and the air was fresh. We again headed toward Birmingham. Mary Lou had been very sick during the night; possibly some food poisoning. She slept most of the way through Alabama and Mississippi. As we were tooling along, I noted that the sensor was telling me it was time for an oil change in the van. I called my service advisor in Escondido to ask whether I could make it to Dallas since the car had been at the dealership there before (years ago). He messaged back that I should just look for a Honda dealer and get the oil changed; I would not make it to Dallas. As I closed the phone, and before I could really consider how to resolve the problem I noticed a large blue "H" alongside the road-- Freeway Honda in Birmingham. I hit the off ramp and was soon in their service drive. I explained that we were traveling and that I needed an oil change and asked how long it would take. They weren't too busy, he replied--30 minutes. So, Mary Lou sat in the customer lounge, I walked Midget, and they got the car serviced... and 45 minutes later we were driving out their gate with a clean report.
And on and on it goes. Thursday morning we left Phoenix AZ with virga above and a haboob blowing up from the south. I was concerned that travel through the desert might be dicey. There were black clouds to our north, west and south... but as we traveled, we watched the storm lift over us. There was the usual wind on the Whitewater grade outside of Palm Springs but we didn't encounter rain until we saw the "Escondido" sign!!
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