Adventures With Carrie and Grace June 2021

My blog has been seriously ignored. The reason? Maybe because the past year and part of this one has been one long Covid experience. As vacinations have begun and the death rate/infection rate has dropped, people have begun moving about. The motels are filled and car rentals are a near impossible thing to accomplish. 

Packed suitcases and a cooler full of shrimp, sausage and rice dressing mix, I left my driveway at 6AM, June 4th. My destination was Sioux City, Iowa to visit the daughter.

10 hrs later, driving through Fayetteville, Arkansas, rush hour and 5 lanes of traffic at 70 mile an hour, I crashed my beloved Mercury Grand Marquis. (this described in detail on my Facebook page). I staggered out of my car, walked to the front and took this photo.

Replacing this car will take some time. I'll scour the 'for sale' advertisements and who knows how long it will take to find another with low mileage at a decent price. You see, these autos were discontinued in 2011. The last time I had to look for an auto, I test drove what the market offered and was not impressed. Most SUV's were so small that you could rub elbows with the person in the passenger seat. The Rav4's were so squirrely on rough roads, the Subaru too tiny as most of the other ones I drove. The Tahoe and the Yukon were a mighty vehicle but I'm unwilling to pay the price of the privilege of driving something that depreciates as soon as you drive it off the lot. 70,000.00 for a vehicle is something my mind just can't deal with. 

For that much money, I want an appreciable asset such as land or house so I will be on the hunt for another MGM. The truck space, the roominess and the comfortable ride plus it being one of the most dependable autos on the road is what I'm looking for. 

I rented a Jeep Cherokee for the remainder of this trip. It must have been a 4 banger and was gutless. There was no 'passing' another vehicle. No guts to make it around and back in time. My 8 cylinder Merc  had those guts. Punching it into passing gear and that land barge would blast pass traffic. I felt safe knowing I could move out and beyond and back into my lane. 

As I was standing in front of my wrecked Marquis, which had climbed an 8ft. concrete wall and slid back down, all tires blown, the hood "V" shaped, the radiator laying on the ground and the front wheels folded back under the car, I mourned the loss as replacing her was going to be time consuming and difficult. The paramedics were impressed that I was alive and uninjured. 

Moving on, a rental Corolla was found and I was back on the highway. I did rent a room about 100 miles up the road and quickly showered to wash off the 40 oz. coke that I was wearing when the accident happened. Next order of business was to dump everything out on the bed that had been tightly packed in my Merc and organize it into something manageable and then to sleep. 

4AM in the morning and I was back on the highway headed for Sioux City, Iowa. I expected to be sore in mystery places but that didn't happen. The large knot just above my foot was the only bodily area that would witness the accident I had survived. 

After arriving in Sioux, I turned in the Corolla and drove the daughter's Dodge truck until I left Sioux City and rented the Jeep Cherokee.

This post is just a memory log of that day. A post will follow recording the days after arriving in Sioux City.