The Dunham Fun Bus

And a bus it is!! We have had car issues all winter.....the Expedition is still doing great, but the truck (AKA The Black Beast) is not. It is a no-wheel-drive that has no business on the road anytime even resembling winter . And we haven't even discussed cosmetic issues - the poor guy has been through a lot and is missing all his teeth! See??


He is a great beater ranch truck, though, and unfortunatley, gets the best gas mileage of any vehicle we have. Brad has had to drive the Expedition while working this winter and so I have had to go out in the truck a number of times. I have been stuck twice and even had to call USAA to pull me out. I was not even a block away from home that time (if we had blocks out here by us). I was taking the neighbor's driveway because ours is way too steep and there was NO WAY I was getting up on account of the ice. I had visions of trying to drive up the driveway and sliding back down - backwards - into a big logging truck...not pretty. Even our neighbor's drive was too snowy for The Beast and about halfway up, he stopped going and the tires started spinning. I tried to go backward and landed my behind in a snow drift. The guy that came to pull me out had a good laugh at my predicament. HE would never have gotten in that situation ( I am pretty sure he's right - McGyver would never have ended up that way either) and he probably figured I was blond underneath all this dark hair. It's okay, I can laugh at myself...it didn't help that my then 14 year old son was laughing too.


And the Suburban has looked like this since the weather got bad. It needs a front end something-or-other and won't get that until the weather gets nice. Even then, the engine needs an overhaul. It will be a while until McGyver gets to that project.

So, as you can see, the situation was bleak....a wife that can't drive worth a darn in the snow, one non-working car and another that couldn't drive in the snow even if the wifey could. Brad has been sort of looking for a diesel truck so that we could haul a trailer of bison. However, a truck won't fit us all, so we would still have to drive two vehicles to CA when we deliver. Brad went in to talk to the diesel guy in town about engines/trucks, etc. The guy asked if we'd ever thought about a diesel Excursion. We had, but they are hard to come by and expensive. It just so happened that he was selling his personal vehicle that had been meticulously maintained. It has low mileage and the price was good. So, we are now the owners of one 2002, Ford diesel bison hauling Excursion with a 7.3L engine (somehow that was a good thing). The thing is indeed a bus and, compared to the Expedition, it has so much room we don't know what to do with ourselves....I am sure that real quickly, the kids will figure out how to drag everything they own into it when we go out. That is just their way.