Auto Repair Nightmares During Cross Country Trips
A year ago my husband and I left for our cross country trip, so that we could attend my grandmother’s funeral. We had to drive from Pennsylvania to Arizona and then back again. We allowed ONLY 12 days for our trip and we knew that most of that time would be spent on the road.
Things were going well on our cross country trip until we hit the great state of Texas. As soon as we crossed the state line, the car troubles began! Within hours, we knew we would need to find an Auto Repair, which was about 30 miles away.
For this cross country trip, we rented a large luxury car…after all, we wanted to be super comfortable while doing all of this traveling. The car was working wonderfully until we hit the Texas state line and then all of a sudden…we had problems!
The car was over-heating, the transmission was slipping and wouldn’t catch gear. We had 30 miles to go until we would hit Austin, but we didn’t make it. We had to pull over and call a tow truck to come get the car and to tow it to the auto repair shop.
On top of all of that, we had to call a taxi to come get us and drive us into Austin to meet back up with our rental car. That taxi company charged us $192.00 for that 30 minute ride into Austin. Oh my gosh!
The car repair shop checked out the rental car and finally told us it was the transmission and that it would take 2 to 3 days to repair. Sigh, that definitely put a “wrench” into our travel plans. We ended up finding a hotel and locked ourselves into the hotel for 2 1/2 days and got caught up on our sleep.
Once the car was done, we headed back out onto the road and finally arrived in Arizona 2 days later. We spent a total of 1 1/2 days in Arizona for the funeral services and had to head back home.
From that day forward, hubby says we will never drive across the country again! Next time, we will be hitting the “air”.
Have any of you ever driven cross country? If so, got any travel stories to share? I would love to hear about them!
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