After Olathe, Kansas we headed to Muskogee, Oklahoma but a frightening thing happened on the way. We stopped in Copan (I couldn’t stop thinking of Copan, Honduras) and had a wonderful lunch. Best onion rings ever at the Copan Restaurant and Sissy got a steak. It was tender and since there were so many cows around the restaurant we figured the meat was WAY local.
I almost fueled up there at the restaurant/gas station, but realized that the price was much higher than I’d first thought and headed down the road. About 5 miles after fueling up (luckily it was only a 1/2 tank) the car began losing power and behaving very badly, finally culminating in billowing huge clouds of white smoke and a complete intermittent lack of acceleration. We limped into Tulsa and tried to change our hotel reservation before the cancellation policy expired, but Tulsa was full-up. We had to either find a different hotel and lose our free night or head to Muskogee. We got lost about eleventymillion times in Tulsa, just at the point that we couldn’t afford more wanderings about the city, wondering if the car was going to come to a complete stop and strand us or what. I had horrible directions for the hotel in Muskogee and it turned out that we went WAAAAYYY out of our way, but finally finding the hotel we were happy just to have arrived. If necessary, we’d have the car towed to the dealership. Now we just had to hope the dealership could fit us in, could fix the car, AND could fix the car before the holiday weekend. We arrived on a Saturday night and waited out Sunday in our hotel room, a bit worried we’d get caught out with an overage of people in the room (we always sneak six into a room for 4-5 but since we’re there just overnight it hadn’t been a problem) and asked to leave. I was a nice La Quinta but not in the same league as the Appleton La Quinta and I really hoped we wouldn’t have to stay a long long time.
We really couldn’t go anywhere on Saturday or Sunday, so we took a couple walks around town and vegged in the hotel room, trying not to attract the staff’s attention without completely turning the kids’ brains to mush with constant Food channel/HGTV. I had a lovely run on Sunday along what had to be rails to trails converted trails and early Monday got the car to the dealership, where they promised to look at the car that day. I only had to call a couple times before they were looking at the car and while we were almost CERTAIN we had an injector problem, they found gas in our diesel tank. I immediately emailed the company we fueled up at and hope we get some compensation for their error. We were shocked to find that the dealership was able to not only diagnose but fix the tank problem and in addition, they took care of the 2 recall issues pending on our car.
We had the car back by 6pm and headed out to find some food – we try not to patronize the chains but the local establishments, and stumbled upon a Chinese food place where we spent an hour listening to the owner’s tales of life in Muskogee and his family history in San Francisco and China. It was a very special night and yet another example of what a great time we have when things go “wrong”. I’d emptied the car of almost everything in anticipation of a long stay at the dealership and was up early the next morning rearranging the back of the car, yet again. We were headed to Temple, Texas that night and our last opportunity for a free night.
