DAY 12q

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June 12 ... mile 1,701 Well, looks like this is the end of the road for this leg of the trip. We tried our best to get the old girl running smoothly again, but no such luck. We swapped the carb, troubleshot the fuel and exhaust system and tested everything that we could think of. It now looks like it is something inside the engine which is pretty difficult to fix in the Best Western parking lot. Having said that, the local Napa was willing to do whatever they could to help us out, as was Surplus City Jeep Parts and Novak. In the end our difficult decision to put the trip "on hold" came down to finances...or better yet, lack there of. Because of all of the mechanical issues we faced along the way, we were way behind schedule and because of the high gas prices we were way over budget as well.

After lengthy discussions and strategizing we have decided to give the Willys a rest in a "Five Star" executive suite storage facility while we re-group and come up with a game plan for finishing the trip in a few months. Once we have everything figured out we will send an email to all of our mail list subscribers detailing our plan.

After we had the Jeep safely tucked away we went out for lunch at Los Compadres Taqueria in Florence...If you are ever in the area you gotta check this place out.  It is tiny and quaint with fantastic Mexican food.  After we had everything taken care of in Florence, Darren drove us to Eugene so we could catch our 6:40 am flight to Canada.  We checked into the hotel and walked across the street for our last Mexican dinner.  After dinner we went back to the room to update the website...we turned on the TV for some background noise and the next thing we new the alarm was going off and it was time to get up to catch our flight.  Needless to say we were both physically and mentally exhausted from the previous 11 days.

We would like to thank all of our sponsors as well as everyone that followed along in our journey. We would especially like to thank Darren Dubey for bailing us out in Florence and spending a full day driving us around.

We want to make it clear to everyone that we are by no means finished with our trip and this is nothing more than an extended pit stop.  Our plan is to fly back to Florence, OR in a few months, fix the Jeep and then finish the trip. Even though the trip has not continued as we had hoped it would to the final mile we cannot express enough how much we did enjoy the time we got to spend (even with the breakage and struggles) out on the road in our old Jeep. One thing that we would like to encourage others to do is to get out in their own vehicles and see some of what this great country has to offer. There is some great history, scenery and people to see and meet during these travels and we truly have enjoyed our opportunity to see and visit the places we did and are already planning and looking forward to the rest of this years trip once we can get our old Willys ready for the rest of the trek. Until then...keep on Jeepin' and we hope to see you on the road soon! We'll be back!!!

October 15, 2008  We had every intention of finishing the "West Coast" leg of the trip towards the end of summer but I guess it just wasn't meant to be.  We ran out of 2 things that prevented us from carrying on...time and money.  Although we didn't get as far as we had planned this year, we ended up achieving the accomplishment of taking our old Willys from Coast-to-Coast which in itself is quite feat, and we are by no means done with this adventure.  We will be back on the road next year to carry on our journey and the quest for the ultimate goal of taking our Willys through all 48 States...it just may take us a little longer than originally anticipated which is absolutely fine with us!

Stay tuned....once we have decided on the dates for the 2009 road trip we will publish them here.