{What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas}

........'er St. George.

Just as we got to the outskirts of town, traffic came to a dead stop. There was a car wreck on the freeway. Finally after 1 hour of idling and constantly checking our thermostat we were on our way. After going about 10 miles we were stopped again due to construction. Finally, we got through the construction and we were off!

I drove to Mesquite and then turned the driving over to Kurt.

The next thing we had to conquer was the Gorge. Everything was fine. The temperature gage stayed right where it should have, my breathing was in check, there were no worries.

We made it through the Gorge. Just as we hit the bottom of it-BAM!

Up went the temperature gage. The car began to overheat. Our prayers were answered in that we did make it through the gorge. There was an exit/off ramp at the bottom of the Gorge where we were able to pull off and investigate yet again. This time it overheated in a bad way.

The top of the reservoir overflow had come off, probably blew off from overheating, and shot fluid everywhere. EVERYWHERE. All over everything under the hood of the car, dripping off of anything an everything that it landed on. The anti freeze/water that we put in was also low again.

As we were contemplating if we could make it to St. George, just a few short miles away, a man in a white pick up pulled up. He offered his assistance. We filled the Blue Bandit up yet again with water, and the man in the white pick up followed us down the road to St. George. We made it to St. George, and we thanked the man and sent him on his way.

We looked up the one and only Subaru dealership in St. George on Kurt's phone. With just a couple of hours before it was to close, we went there to weigh our options.

Not knowing if we had a cracked head or if anti freeze was leaking into the engine (that's super bad), we knew that we weren't going to make it home to Salt Lake. We began car shopping.....

The inventory was limited. The majority of cars on their lot were new. They had no preowned outbacks, for that's what we wanted. I knew/know that buying a brand new car off the lot is one of the dumbest/biggest mistakes that one can make. Both Kurt and I new that we would never buy a new car off any lot.

With the clock ticking, we had to make the decision if we were going to buy a car or not. And not only just a car, but a brand new car. The preowned cars that they had (not Outbacks) all had high miles and weren't the cars of our choice. The one Outback that we were considering was a little more than we wanted to pay. After much contemplation, bargaining (which we didn't get any type of bargain), and coming to grips with the fact that it was a brand new car (which we swore we would never buy off of a lot) we finally felt at ease with buying the brand new Subaru Outback.

While we were cautiously excited to be getting a new car, under the circumstances that we had to get it took the fun out of it. We settled a little bit, but we do like the car. It's the nicest car that Kurt or I have ever had. AND it is a safe, sound car. And that's what mattered.

Here is Kurt shutting the door and walking away from the Blue Bandit for the last time after removing all of our stuff from it.

And here we are putting on our happy faces with our pretty new Silver Steamer (that's it's new name).

The crazy thing about the whole buying a car-we walked through their dealership doors, put no money down, had not title in hand for our car, traded in our (who knows how badly damaged Subaru) without a "real" inspection (because by the time we decided to buy a car their inspection guys had gone home for the day), and got a low interest rate. All due to having awesome credit. It's crazy. We didn't fork out a dime and here we were driving a brand new car off their lot.

I guess it was kind of fun going on vacation in one car and coming home in another. It's still kind of all crazy to me. I mean who does that? Goes on vacation and gets a new car? Really. It's crazy.