Part 2 of the Camper Caper...

I left off with the happy mid-story ending where the camper and the boys towing it arrived safely home and I sprinted off to Atlanta to attend a birth.  That was Saturday night/Sunday morning.

I got home at 6 am, crashed for 2 short hours before I heard the sweet sounds of my children barging into my bedroom door yelling something about "Daddy driving a campsite into the yard."

{translation: campsite means camper in toddler speak}

I looked out my bedroom window and indeed the "campsite" was backing into the yard.  Finally.

It was a lot bigger than I expected it to be.  14 feet doesn't seem like much until you realize it's 14 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 9 feet tall.  That's a big old vintage heifer in my back yard.  And considering I was convinced this thing had all kinds of bad juju... I honestly wasn't really that happy to see it.

The bloom was even further off the rose when I saw the paint job wasn't quite as the seller had presented it in pictures.

But to be fair, it's just cosmetic.  She's a classy lady under that peeling paint.


We basically spent the rest of the day hoping against empty hope that the Mazda's transmission had something benign wrong with it, like a cracked seal, or whatever.  Hubby spent a long time explaining the mechanics behind what he thought happened... but in typical wife fashion, all I heard was:

"Blah blah blah... older car with lots of miles on it... blah blah... probably driving a little too fast... blah blah... forgot to turn off overdrive... blah blah blah blah... my fault."

Cool, at least we cleared that up.  *cringe*

Monday morning came and it was confirmed by the service department at the dealership that yes, the beloved Mazda Tribute was el deado.  Well, actually, not entirely.  For the low low price of $3500 plus labor we could have a new transmission just dropped right in.  HA.

So it became obvious we had to start researching other options.  These, in no particular order:
1) Go back to X other state and do paperwork to "trade the car in" to the dealership and buy one of their cars.
2) Find someone else remotely in X other state to buy the car.
3) Drive a UHaul to X other state and tow car home.  Then deal with it.
4) Pay someone to light it on fire in the dealership parking lot (step dad's idea)

We ended up being pleasantly surprised to find out that a local salvage yard wanted to pay us cash money for the car!  And all we had to do was sign over and mail the title.  HUGE sigh of relief.  No more long road trips towing unusually large objects for us. 

Oh wait, did I say no more towing of large objects?  That's right.

It's your typical once bitten, twice shy type situation, folks.  I love the grand old Tag-A-Long dame, but her butt was plastered all over Craigslist and the Facebook yard sales by Monday night.

We've had 7 calls about her already.  :)



{next up: how we went from a 3 car family to a 1 car family in 5 days flat...}