Day 56: The next day - reprised
Friday, May 26, 2017
I am up early the next day. It is very hard to get out of bed. The ribs & diaphragm are very sore when I use them. So sitting up in bed is very painful. Standing up can be painful unless you just use your legs, which I am learning to remember. I am also learning to exhale before I reach down to pick something up.
I go to the lobby to walk around and a gentleman named Greg shows up. It turns out he grew up here and comes back to visit his brother-in-law who raises cattle. Greg has chronic lyme's disease and seems to be doing rather well. He gives me the name of a Dr. who has a series of videos on how he calmed the disease down.
While I am doing this Vicki has secured us passage on a shuttle, Salt Lake Express, to Pocatello and a hotel in Pocatello. We got lucky with the shuttle because they normally don't stop at Malad but someone else wanted to get off. They made an exception about crating your dog; allowing Max on it without a crate.
Now we need our meds. Vicki calls the Sheriff and tthe dispatcher said she would send them over when someone else arrives. Last night we waited a couple of hours, we did not want to do that again so after waiting a half an hour the three of us walked over to the Sheriff station to get them.
We come back to the hotel. I see Greg and say goodbye to him. I wonder why I had met him and what should I do about it. Was there something I should have taken from this meeting or was it something my brother-in-law or both.
The lady who works at the hotel comes down the stairs. She said she would have offered to take us to Pocatello but she had another job cleaning some place down the road. As I count it, she has 3 part-time jobs: front desk at the hotel, waitress at the bar, and office cleaner.
We find out it is really chilly. I am still in shorts and t-shirt. We now try to find food with Max. The problem we had is we have to sit outside with Max and it is not warm out there. We go by one restaurant people kept mentioning, the Pines Restaurant. We walk there it is on the way to the shuttle stop. They turn us down. We end up walking to the bus stop and there is a Bugger King. Before there we see a Family Dollar store. Vicki goes in and tries to find us warmer clothing. She walks out with a t-shirt hoody, which is a little bit warmer and a long sleeve jersey for her.
Vicki goes in and orders her breakfast. When she comes out I order mine. When I come back out, Vicki is talking with someone. It turns out she was one of the EMs. She saw us standing here and stopped to see how we were doing. Her main job is a Real estate Agent and she does EM on the side. She said she would offer to take us but she had several appointments this morning. It was really nice of her to stop by.
We were very happy to have come to Malad. Everyone we met were very nice and I would recommend it to anyone. Thanks to everyone at Redfield Memorial Hospital including Nancy, Mark and Amy Thomas, Onieda sheriff, the owners and workers of Malad Hotel, and the owners and workers of Allen pharmacy. I keep wondering why God sent us this way instead of Protocello?
We finish eating out in the cold and wait for the shuttle. It is about 40 minutes late. We get on the shuttle but there are not 2 seats together. Eventually, Vicki sits down and I try to find a seat. At that moment, the person next to Vicki realizes that Paul & I are together and says he will move. Max was his normal self, not sitting still and panting a lot. This is what he does when he gets into a car. So, we put up with this for an hour. We finally arrive in Pocatello at a Maverick c-store.
The next plan was to go to the airport and get a car. We ask around if there is a way to get to the airport and nobody knows. In the meantime we had reserved a room for a day at the Clarion Inn. Vicki calls them and they have a shuttle, which picks us up and takes us to the Clarion. We check in and decide on the type of car we want to rent. The shuttle takes her to the car rental place and she returns with a car: Ford Excursion. We chose the size to minimize the number of trips to the tow place to pick up our stuff.
Lee's towing in Pocatello towed our car and UTT to his storage place. It is about 10 minutes away. We drive there this afternoon and begin collecting items that are sentimental to us. Amanda who helps us is the daughter of the owner. They did not want us to go into the vehicles for safety reasons. We start with our car, which is a 2017 Nissan Armada. I think we chose a good car. It handled rolling over at least once and the three of us walked away. The front window is shattered but did not break and the back window was broken out. The side air bags were all blown. We get my camera bag out of the car. It looks like it survived the rollover. Max's seat and strap get pulled out. It is what help to save him. We leave quite a bit of stuff in the car.
Next we tackle UTT. UTT as we were told by Lee, owner of Lee's Towing, just fell on its side and did not roll. The first thing I noticed was the refrigerator door came off. The freezer door did not. Now this was a residential refrigerator, which means it did not use gas and it was 10 cu ft instead of the standard 6 cu ft and the door is heavier. We did have the lock on to keep the doors from opening but in this case it did not work.
We started getting stuff our clothes and other stuff out of the trailer we thought we needed. It filled up the back of the Ford Excursion we had rented.
I have not talked about the fact that mentally this was stressful. We were looking at the vehicles that we have been in for the last 2 1/2 months. Vicki had spent the 2 months before the trip and part of the trip making UTT livable for us. In fact making it a home. It was gone. It would be like your house burning down. Also, when looking at the car it saved our lives or at least kept us from getting seriously injured. When we think how lucky we were, the question was why were we so lucky. Does God have a plan for us? If so, what does he want us to do?
Now that the first trip was done, we have to figure out what we want to do next. We have reservations for our travel trailer in West Yellowstone (5/29/2017-6/8/17) where we will be meeting up with David and Susan. In fact, we had just extended the stay to include the 5/29/17. We also have reservations for the Grand Tetons for the next week.
After a little discussion we decide we would like to see Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. We did not want our big vacation to end this way. And I personally am not sure I will ever make it out here again.
I then send an email off to David and Susan to give us a call tomorrow morning after 8am. I figured it best to talk with them and it is rather late when we make the decision.
Todo list for tomorrow so far:
Places visited:
Paul and Vicki Kristoff
photo@kristoffs.com
PaulKristoffPhotography.com
paulkristoff.blogspot.com/
I am up early the next day. It is very hard to get out of bed. The ribs & diaphragm are very sore when I use them. So sitting up in bed is very painful. Standing up can be painful unless you just use your legs, which I am learning to remember. I am also learning to exhale before I reach down to pick something up.
I go to the lobby to walk around and a gentleman named Greg shows up. It turns out he grew up here and comes back to visit his brother-in-law who raises cattle. Greg has chronic lyme's disease and seems to be doing rather well. He gives me the name of a Dr. who has a series of videos on how he calmed the disease down.
While I am doing this Vicki has secured us passage on a shuttle, Salt Lake Express, to Pocatello and a hotel in Pocatello. We got lucky with the shuttle because they normally don't stop at Malad but someone else wanted to get off. They made an exception about crating your dog; allowing Max on it without a crate.
Now we need our meds. Vicki calls the Sheriff and tthe dispatcher said she would send them over when someone else arrives. Last night we waited a couple of hours, we did not want to do that again so after waiting a half an hour the three of us walked over to the Sheriff station to get them.
We come back to the hotel. I see Greg and say goodbye to him. I wonder why I had met him and what should I do about it. Was there something I should have taken from this meeting or was it something my brother-in-law or both.
The lady who works at the hotel comes down the stairs. She said she would have offered to take us to Pocatello but she had another job cleaning some place down the road. As I count it, she has 3 part-time jobs: front desk at the hotel, waitress at the bar, and office cleaner.
We find out it is really chilly. I am still in shorts and t-shirt. We now try to find food with Max. The problem we had is we have to sit outside with Max and it is not warm out there. We go by one restaurant people kept mentioning, the Pines Restaurant. We walk there it is on the way to the shuttle stop. They turn us down. We end up walking to the bus stop and there is a Bugger King. Before there we see a Family Dollar store. Vicki goes in and tries to find us warmer clothing. She walks out with a t-shirt hoody, which is a little bit warmer and a long sleeve jersey for her.
Vicki goes in and orders her breakfast. When she comes out I order mine. When I come back out, Vicki is talking with someone. It turns out she was one of the EMs. She saw us standing here and stopped to see how we were doing. Her main job is a Real estate Agent and she does EM on the side. She said she would offer to take us but she had several appointments this morning. It was really nice of her to stop by.
We were very happy to have come to Malad. Everyone we met were very nice and I would recommend it to anyone. Thanks to everyone at Redfield Memorial Hospital including Nancy, Mark and Amy Thomas, Onieda sheriff, the owners and workers of Malad Hotel, and the owners and workers of Allen pharmacy. I keep wondering why God sent us this way instead of Protocello?
We finish eating out in the cold and wait for the shuttle. It is about 40 minutes late. We get on the shuttle but there are not 2 seats together. Eventually, Vicki sits down and I try to find a seat. At that moment, the person next to Vicki realizes that Paul & I are together and says he will move. Max was his normal self, not sitting still and panting a lot. This is what he does when he gets into a car. So, we put up with this for an hour. We finally arrive in Pocatello at a Maverick c-store.
The next plan was to go to the airport and get a car. We ask around if there is a way to get to the airport and nobody knows. In the meantime we had reserved a room for a day at the Clarion Inn. Vicki calls them and they have a shuttle, which picks us up and takes us to the Clarion. We check in and decide on the type of car we want to rent. The shuttle takes her to the car rental place and she returns with a car: Ford Excursion. We chose the size to minimize the number of trips to the tow place to pick up our stuff.
Lee's towing in Pocatello towed our car and UTT to his storage place. It is about 10 minutes away. We drive there this afternoon and begin collecting items that are sentimental to us. Amanda who helps us is the daughter of the owner. They did not want us to go into the vehicles for safety reasons. We start with our car, which is a 2017 Nissan Armada. I think we chose a good car. It handled rolling over at least once and the three of us walked away. The front window is shattered but did not break and the back window was broken out. The side air bags were all blown. We get my camera bag out of the car. It looks like it survived the rollover. Max's seat and strap get pulled out. It is what help to save him. We leave quite a bit of stuff in the car.
Next we tackle UTT. UTT as we were told by Lee, owner of Lee's Towing, just fell on its side and did not roll. The first thing I noticed was the refrigerator door came off. The freezer door did not. Now this was a residential refrigerator, which means it did not use gas and it was 10 cu ft instead of the standard 6 cu ft and the door is heavier. We did have the lock on to keep the doors from opening but in this case it did not work.
We started getting stuff our clothes and other stuff out of the trailer we thought we needed. It filled up the back of the Ford Excursion we had rented.
I have not talked about the fact that mentally this was stressful. We were looking at the vehicles that we have been in for the last 2 1/2 months. Vicki had spent the 2 months before the trip and part of the trip making UTT livable for us. In fact making it a home. It was gone. It would be like your house burning down. Also, when looking at the car it saved our lives or at least kept us from getting seriously injured. When we think how lucky we were, the question was why were we so lucky. Does God have a plan for us? If so, what does he want us to do?
Now that the first trip was done, we have to figure out what we want to do next. We have reservations for our travel trailer in West Yellowstone (5/29/2017-6/8/17) where we will be meeting up with David and Susan. In fact, we had just extended the stay to include the 5/29/17. We also have reservations for the Grand Tetons for the next week.
After a little discussion we decide we would like to see Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. We did not want our big vacation to end this way. And I personally am not sure I will ever make it out here again.
I then send an email off to David and Susan to give us a call tomorrow morning after 8am. I figured it best to talk with them and it is rather late when we make the decision.
Todo list for tomorrow so far:
- Now that we have decided to go to Yellowstone & Grand Tetons,
- talk with David and Susan
- how do we get there
- where do we stay?
- how long will we be gone.
- What do we do with stuff we do not need
- What to do with Max while we do this. He probably will not do well in David's and Susan's motor home with two big dogs.
- How do we get everything home including Max, Vicki & I?
Places visited:
- Big Bend National Park
- Grand Canyon National Park
- Upper Antelope Canyon
- Horseshoe Bend
- Arches National Park
- Canyonlands National Park
- Bryce Canyon National Park
- Zion National Park
- Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
- Utah Lake State Park
Paul and Vicki Kristoff
photo@kristoffs.com
PaulKristoffPhotography.com
paulkristoff.blogspot.com/
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