The adventure doesn't start until something goes wrong

And everything went wrong. We drove the Jeep with our garage sale trailer to Cascade, Idaho for the Bowman family annual unofficial Fourth of July family reunion. We put our bikes and gear on the trailer and took off. It only took us about five hours to make the three and a half hour trip. As we got to my uncle’s house we noticed that the wheel of the trailer was a little crooked. My dad and Jon lifted the trailer up and the wheel just popped off. Lucky for us it wasn’t while we were driving.

That night we went to watch the fireworks and they were so far away we couldn’t even hear them. It was cold and we were getting eaten by mosquitoes, but we got to enjoy them with my grandparents. Sunday was pretty uneventful. We went to the hot pots and enjoyed the company of some strange people from Boise. On the way home we got to see tons of fireworks being shot off over the lake.

Monday was Jon’s birthday and we went biking at Brundage. My cousin Katie came with us. She had not done much mountain biking and went over the handle bars a few times. By the end of the day she was covered in mud and had a tire track across the front of her shirt. The Brundage photo people even took a picture of her and gave her a free day pass.

With the exception of the trailer tire, everything was pretty tame until Tuesday. Jon and I were planning on leaving around two but we wanted to go explore the mountains by Grandma and Grandpa’s cabin first. We took some dirt road and went way far into the mountains. I wish you could bottle that smell and bring it home. There were a ton of roads going everywhere. As we were driving we found this kid who had run out of gas on his four wheeler. He didn’t know where he was, his parents didn’t know where he was, and his buddy was somewhere behind him broken down as well. We found his buddy who had walked about a mile and was sobbing. After some intense persuasion we towed the kids to where they thought their camp was. After about six hours we finally found their parents. Oh, I almost forgot. As we were towing the kids, we drove through a road where cows were openly grazing. Katie looked at me as said, "I just got hit with something at it's not mud" She smelled her hand and it was cow poop. All of a sudden poop starts flying everywhere. We had the top off the jeep so it was hitting us in the head. One hit my head and I later found it in the hood of my sweatshirt. GROSS!!!

We didn’t end up leaving Cascade until around nine. On the way home the lights on the jeep went out and as we were stopped Jon discovered that he had forgotten to put the oil cap on. Lucky for us it was wedged in a crack. We didn’t get home until 2:45 and Jon had to work at six and me at 7:30.

Even with all of the craziness that went on, it was a really fun weekend. We got to hang out with my awesome cousin who we never see and my grandpa who is sick. It probably wouldn’t have been so much fun if everything had gone perfectly. “The adventure doesn’t start until something goes wrong”.