Brad and I weren’t going to blog our 2023 trip in the Winona Rider. This would be our fourth year of traveling in the Rider. We have put on over 30,000 miles. Everyone has heard all of our stories. Most of our humorous mistakes in the Sprinter Van involved our own “User Error”. We are pros now. What can go wrong? Plus, we were going to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons and everyone besides me, it seems, has already been there. We were just going to post cute pictures of Moose (Meese?), maybe a Buffalo jam or two, and some pretty views and sunsets with the dogs.
Then Saturday happened.
After our lovely camping spot in Coalville, Utah, we filled up with diesel and headed up to Yellowstone National Park. About sixty miles into our trip, the Check Engine light came on. Not very comforting. I started googling all the reasons that a Check Engine light might come on. There are, of course, hundreds of reasons. Brad said the engine seemed to be running well so we kept going. After another 50 miles an unusual warning sign came on that said we had 10 Starts Remaining. That quickly got our attention.
Out came Google again and the “10 Starts Remaining” warning seemed like a reason to stop. We were going to have lunch in Malad City, Idaho shortly so we figured that would be a good place to figure out our options. We looked up Mercedes dealers near Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. There were exactly none. We called a service agent in Salt Lake City who laughed a little when we asked if we could bring in the van and then she told us they were booked until mid-July. Uh-oh. That’s not going to work.
Brad suggested that we go to our condo in Boulder. If we were going to get stuck somewhere Boulder would be better than Malad City, Idaho. And we calculated that we could get to Boulder in less than ten stops. (Well, nine stops now since we just stopped for lunch)
So…we turned around and backtracked about 100 miles and headed to Boulder. After filling up with gas we had eight starts left. Since it was getting late and we couldn’t make it all the way to Boulder, we booked an RV Park in Rawlins, Wyoming for Saturday night. That’s one more stop down. We figured if we accounted for gas and our stop for the night, we should have six stops left before the Winona Rider shut down for good. We hoped we were counting right.
The KOA RV park had a beautiful view of the freeway. And, being a last minute booking, our camp spot was right next to that freeway. Didn’t matter. We were so happy we’d made it this far that it looked great to us. We took the dogs for their customary sunset photo with a nice billboard in the background. They were less than enthusiastic. Now, if we can just make it the 211 miles back to Boulder we’ll be home free.
A funny thing began to happen as we drove back to Boulder. The warning sign went back and forth between 10 and 16 stops. Was the Winona Rider fixing itself? Nice! It was as if the doctor told us he was wrong and we had more than 24 hours to live. The countdown was no longer counting down. We started to think that we were experiencing less of a mechanical error and more of a possible sensor issue or maybe even bad diesel fuel from Coalville. We still didn’t want to mess around though because Google also told us that if we get down to 0 starts, it really means 0 starts and we would need to be towed.
We arrived in Boulder on Sunday and we have never been so happy to see our beloved town! Our great friends, Joan and Steve, kindly let us park the Winona Rider at their place. We completely unpacked it and borrowed one of their cars to get back to the condo. We waited until Monday to talk to our service agent to find out our fate.
After consulting with our service agent twice on Monday, he gave us the green light to go ahead and continue our journey (of course with the caveat that if we break down it isn’t his fault). The good news is for the moment the Starts Warning Sign is no longer on. We just have to contend with the pesky Check Engine light.
So, I guess we will blog a little on this trip since we have had more adventure than we were counting on.
Will the Winona Rider make it to Winona Lake?
Will we end up stuck in Omaha or Ogalalla, Nebraska?
Will the 10 Starts Warning sign come on again?
So many questions and we will fill you in on the answers as we travel Eastward to Nebraska on Tuesday!
Lisa and Brad's Travels 