Saved by the Van

Okay, first I suppose I need to apologize for the not updating the blog for a really long time. The thing is, I am sick... really sick and I have spent the better part of the last three days sleeping, drinking tea, making soft whimpering sounds, and feeling sorry for myself. So you all have missed the same part of the trip as I, mainly New Orleans and the entire state of Mississippi. Today, however, we have arrived in Fairhope Alabama and, waiting outside the coffee shop, I feel that just can't neglect you anymore, so here is what has happened since Mardi Gras:

On Wednesday, October (that's our van) made the ultimate self-sacrifice. Unbeknownst to us, a tragedy of some kind (we will never know what it was) awaited us outside of Lafayette around 3 o'clock. But thankfully, October managed to divert us away from the incident by taking it upon herself to rupture a non-essential part, thus delaying our departure. Events unfolded as follows: first she created a very strong  you-don't-want-to-keep-driving-like-this smell in the rear of the van. When we pulled over we discovered that she had gone even further still, by sending smoke and large, wet clumps (which ended up being dog hair soaked in chemical) out of the rear heater and by dripping a large quantity of green liquid (antifreeze) our from under several sections of the slider door.

One might almost believe that she had outdone herself. But we know it was only what was necessary at the time.

She did, however, chose an excellent location to delay us. The plaza we pulled into had a store which carried the part that Casey needed to by-pass the heater. Just a little knowledge of hydroponic tubing and we were good to go. Well, not exactly, the entire carpet was soaked in antifreeze, so we had a little cleaning to do. But, you guessed it, one of the stores in the plaza had plenty of water and environmentally-friendly cleaning products. 

So everything turned out just fine and we even got a little lunch out of the deal (there was a quiznos in the plaza too).

Oh, how we love our van.

I will write another blog really soon. There is much more to update you all on. But for now, we (as in Casey and the dogs) are off to enjoy the sun with grandpa Jack.

I will be sitting on the porch, trying not to drown in tissues.

Love you all.