The world wide epidemic of Covid-19 put a real crimp in several years of potential travel. We moved houses in 2019 (holidays were used to pack/move/unpack), Covid lockdown(s) wiped out 2020 and 2021. Cross border travel was still problematic in 2022. Jeeze!.
We purchased a used Chrysler Town and Country in 2022 which we planned to use for our spring 2023 trip. However we ran into a total transmission failure as we started to leave town. We tried to find a rental vehicle at the last minute but that proved impossible — again, Covid forced most rental agencies to get rid of most of their fleets. So, we ended up punting our plans to August to try again. Jeeze!.
In August, we set out on a trip to Colorado, Wyoming, and South Dakota. This trip was a reset from our Spring plans where we were planning a trip deeper into the south. We headed out in a westward direction, and Jeeze!, the transmission started acting up again. Determined not to miss out on our plans (though we did have to make adjustments to our return leg), we decided to rent a ‘replacement’ van. We found a suitable rental at Eppley Field in Omaha using online tools, so we carefully drove to Eppley, where we parked the Chrysler in long term parking and picked up another Chrysler (Pacifica) from the airport. We transferred all of our gear and headed out to get back on schedule by driving a 16 hour day to arrive at North Platte around midnight.
Of course we now had to create a diversion in our original plans to loop back to Eppley to return the Pacifica on the way home. We dropped our Chicago plans to go pick up the Town and Country in Omaha. Transferred the gear one more time, returned the Pacifica, and started to drive very carefully back home. On our first day heading towards Toronto, we made it as far as Des Moines. So far so good. We even took a short side trip to Pella with the intent of dropping a touch south toward Indianapolis to take a tour of a small teardrop trailer company nearby. However, on the second day the transmission started to show more problems. We stopped in a small town with a transmission shop to see if they could help, but they said any repairs would set us back $$$ and probably a week of layover. We decided to make a run for Toronto to get home where the transmission was still under warrantee. We drove (carefully) through the second day and into the third day arriving at Toronto about 5am in the morning. Jeeze! (By the way, the transmission had to be fully replaced — again).