i got heartaches in my pocket

Day 11 – Grand Junction, CO to Breckenridge, CO

While we enjoyed our complimentary continental breakfast bright and early on Monday morning, I got the news from the auto shop that I’d been expecting – the engine in our Hyundai Santa Fe was dunzo. It did come with a silver lining though, as the mechanic was confident it would be covered under a warranty extension attached to a service bulletin that he found for us. We just needed to get it towed over to the Hyundai dealership and find out the next steps.

Despite the surprisingly good warranty news, I already knew what the next bad news was going to be. I’ve had a new truck on order for a month already and it’s expected to be a 2023 model, as the supply chain has everything in the automotive industry backed up indefinitely. So the 2nd call I made was to our friendly tow truck driver from the day before, and the 3rd call I made was to the sales department at Red Rock Hyundai in Grand Junction. A very helpful fella named Josh answered and I said “we’re on the way, my husband is too tall to drive nearly anything, please start coming up with options for us.”

We cleaned out 2 weeks of vacation luggage, 100lbs of Ada’s souvenir rocks, and our cooler from our car and crammed it into our rental, checked every nook and cranny of the Hyundai for precious treasures, and then we settled Ada in the lobby of the dealership with unlimited screen time.

By the time we found out that our replacement engine under warranty would take over 2 months to arrive, Zach had already picked out his new car and the dealership had already offered us a trade value of just under half of what we paid for this car in 2018. There was nothing left to do but say a VERY melodramatic goodbye to our Santa Fe and sign the paperwork.

We left the dealership at around 2pm and headed to the airport parking lot, where we moved out of our optimistic rental car and into our new car.

Zach’s a Jeep guy now. You probably wouldn’t understand. If you can read this, tip him over.

I can’t think of a better souvenir from the West than a Jeep Wrangler.

We left the Grand Junction airport and pointed her towards Breckenridge, CO, while we figured out how to run the radio and where to find the window buttons on the fly.

We didn’t miss a single stop on the schedule, and stayed in our planned hotel in Breckenridge. Which was a pretty nice dose of faaancy after a pretty stressful day.

Today’s title from “A Thousand Miles from Nowhere” by Dwight Yoakam.