McCloud was our first stop - not the old TV series but a small town in the middle of nowhere. We had to hunt to find the little cafe-cum-rental shop and to use their rest rooms and had coffee and muffins outside:
Driving on from there, I looked down at the fuel gauge in Lucy's car and was shocked to see how far it had gone down already. We needed fuel fast and we were out in the wilds. I used our Sat Nav to locate the nearest gas station and was relieved to discover it was only 7 miles away. We limped towards it but came across a Shell station after only 4 miles. OK - we'll use this one. I pulled in and opened the fuel cap and was about to start filling when the girl came out and said all her computers had just gone down. Could we pay cash? "No - that won't work either, but you could try using your card on the pay at the pump option." I was a little reluctant but I slid my card in and the machine responded with a request for my Zip Code. I explained that it was a UK card and I didn't have a US Zip Code and before I could stop her, the attendant said she would use hers. "That won't work" I said - "it's got to be linked to my home address". Too late.
We had no choice but to drive on the extra 3 miles to get fuel in the town of Burney. I kind of guessed that my card would now be blocked by my bank and so it turned out - but that's exactly why I carry more than one card.
Slightly more relaxed, we headed onwards. After a few miles, I noticed a yellow warning light had appeared. There was no manual in the car and initially we couldn't figure out what it meant. We got to somewhere I could get wi-fi and I managed to check online for the symbol and it was the engine warning light. What could be causing this? Perhaps the fuel cap wasn't closed properly? Nope - not that. We began a series of phone conversations with Lucy and Scott to try to understand it. We'd had lunch by now and were halfway between Susanville and Reno. Scott checked online and found a dealer in Reno who could look at it for us.
We got to Reno and turned off. By now, it was too late - the first dealer's service dept was now shut - it was Friday and the eve of the July 4th holiday - but Scott found another dealer for us, but, sod's law, it was on the other side of town. It took us a seemingly interminable half hour through so many traffic lights, but we got there in the end. The guys there were in holiday mode, but they said, "sure you can pull in to our service bay and we'll check it out for you - but it'll cost you $150 for them just to scan it for you, without doing anything". "You'd be better off going down to O'Riley's down the road - they'll do it for free". So, off we trotted again.
O'Riley's ran the scan and gave us the error code, which turned out to be a fat lot of good, listing about 10 possible causes. All we wanted to know was whether it was a serious fault or not and if we could carry on our journey to our overnight stop at Tahoe?
Further conversations with Scott, who had done some more online research, followed and we decided to plough on. We were relieved to pull in to The Ridge eventually - although the final steep climb up to the 10,000 feet elevation was done very gingerly.
We grabbed a couple of beers after posing for a photo:
Tomorrow would be another day.
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