The Invisible Passenger

You know you're slipping when something totally blogworthy happens and it doesn't even occur to you to blog about it! I was reminded about it because a friend asked this morning {I had mentioned it on Facebook the other day}.

Last Saturday I pulled into the lot at a local park. As I sat in the car checking my phone, putting earbuds in, etc., I heard some noises that sounded like they might be under the car. I had parked right next to a big tree, so I thought maybe it was the branches hitting my car. Or perhaps it was a squirrel running around. I did look around and didn't see anything going on near me that was noisy. Didn't think any more about it.

Later in the day, hubs and I headed to a drive-thru for coffees. When hubs rolled down his window to pay, we heard a loud meowing and thought a cat might be wandering around. Didn't see anything and headed through the parking lot. At that point I remembered the noises in the morning and asked hubs if we might have a cat in the car. He pulled over and looked under the hood and peeked under the car - nothing there. We headed home, but as we were driving, I heard meowing again! Oh no - that meant there definitely was an extra passenger hidden somewhere in the car. Since we were almost home, we drove on. Neither of us was looking forward to checking this out as we knew the cat probably had been in the car all day and cats & engines aren't a good combo.

Finally hubs spotted the kitten! And it looked to be OK other than frightened and hot. See it in the pic?

Hubs tried to give it water from under the car, but it wouldn't take it. He called Animal Control and blew a fan down there while we waited. They decided it was a feral cat and used tongs to try and get it out, but it kept moving away. It finally found an opening underneath and ran out of the car and out of the garage like a lightening bolt! It was obviously not injured. They thought it looked to be about 6 months old and definitely feral. We could not find it anywhere - probably ran off down the street.

The Animal Control ladies didn't seem too concerned about it, which we thought was a little odd since we didn't truly know if the cat was going to be okay and since we just released a wild cat into our neighborhood. Sorry, neighborhood. But we were glad to have it out of the car and so so glad that it hadn't been injured while in there! Could have been an ugly scene.

No more invisible passengers for us, thank you very much!

Have you ever had an invisible passenger? Did it turn out OK?

Have a blessed day friends!

MT Trip: Car Troubles

Was a busy day here and I still don't have access to pics, but I remembered that I hadn't yet told you the story of our car troubles as we started out on our MT trip about 3 weeks ago or so.

Here it is...

We started out on our trip on 7/8 with no troubles and made it to our first destination. We got up on 7/9 and drove to West Yellowstone, checked into our KOA cabin, and went and had dinner in town and had a little fun at the KOA campground. On the morning of 7/10, we got ready to head into Yellowstone Park. The car was acting very strangely that morning and had trouble going and was making some strange noises. After a bit, it seemed OK and we headed the 5-6 miles into West Yellowstone from the campground. We stopped at a grocery store to get ice and my husband did a check to make sure there was enough transmission fluid in the car. All looked OK.

We headed out of the parking lot and the car acted up again - and then it would no longer move forward!! He got it to go and parked it. Tried it out once more - it reversed into the street just fine, but again would not move forward and we had to push it into the spot. Awful! My husband knew that it was the transmission at that point. Big Huge Sigh.

He asked someone where the nearest mechanic was (only 2 blocks away!) and walked there. In minutes, the mechanic was there with a tow truck. At that time, we noticed that just steps down the sidewalk was a Budget car rental sign. The car went to the mechanic for the day to be checked out and we rented a car for a few days, hoping to return it early. We transferred our stuff and went into the Park as planned - no stoppin' us!

To make a very long story short, it did turn out to be the transmission and had to be ordered and shipped in. This started on a Thursday - the car was finished at the end of the day on Tuesday! We did our Park trip through Saturday, then drove on with the rental car to MT for the rest of our visit. My hubby and I went back to return the rental car and retrieve our freshly fixed vehicle on Tuesday. All went as well as could be expected.

West Yellowstone is a beautiful little town to have your car break down in, but of course anything at that mechanic will be MUCH more expensive than anywhere else. And I've never heard of car rental rates so high! The lady was nice enough to give us a 10% discount on that. So, this was our MOST expensive trip EVER! Seriously, we could all have taken a trip to Hawaii and not spent as much.

But the Lord blessed us so much by where the car broke down. We had traveled for 2 days in many remote areas where it could have happened. This was right in the town outside of the Park we were going into, 2 blocks from the mechanic, steps from a car rental (what if there had been no car rental??), a scenic 3 hour drive from my Dad, and did not actually interfere that much with our sight-seeing in Yellowstone Park! Praise the Lord!

Yes, the car is running fabulously right now; thank you for asking. :)

And now you know what happened, 'cause I know you were wondering.

Have a blessed day of driving!