Spring Break 2016, Part 1
So this last week was spring break for me. No need to worry about school stuff, so I took some time off work to have a vacation with a friend of mine. I had thought my family was going to Florida this year, but it turned out that wasn't in the cards, so I went up north to visit my parents in my favorite northern Montana town, Seeley Lake.
I worked a closing shift on Saturday night, so we got the truck packed and ready to go that afternoon. After I left work, I went to pick up my friend Lucas, and we hit the road. We drove through the night, doing the usual route through Bozeman, Three Forks, Helena, and over McDonald Pass to Elliston. Once we passed Elliston though, the truck started acting weird. There was a lot of surging and jumping from the engine, and I was down on power. I checked for codes with my OBDII app, and sure enough, my crankshaft position sensor had bitten the dust. So I dropped my speed and nursed the truck the remaining 50 miles to Seeley Lake. Luckily it didn't completely stall on us. After we cruised into Seeley at 3:00 AM, we hit the beds, pretty exhausted.
I woke up the next morning and started calling places in Missoula, which is about an hour away, to find out if anyone had a crank position sensor in stock. After a few calls, I found an AutoZone that had it. I had them set the part aside for me, woke Lucas up, and grabbed the keys for my dad's F250. My parents were out of town at a Montana Aviation conference down in Helena, but luckily his truck was still there. So we stopped in town for some coffee before heading out to Missoula.
The drive in was uneventful, but not as nice as my Nissan would have been. I was suddenly acutely aware of how happy I was for spending what I had on my suspension. Anyway, we cruised into Missoula and went straight to the AutoZone there. $24 later and I had my crank position sensor. From there, we decided to get lunch, so we stopped at Bridge Pizza, an awesome local pizza joint serving some fantastic food and great local beers. We picked up a simple pepperoni pizza and headed back towards Seeley.
Once we got back into town, we decided to leave the repair until the next day so we could do some actual sightseeing. My favorite view in the valley is from the picturesque Holland Lake Lodge, which sits on the shore of Holland Lake under the shadow of the Swan Mountains. There was less snow on the ground than I expected, and it was fairly warm, so we spent a lot of time checking the place out and getting some photos.
At this point, it was starting to get a little dark, so we decided to call it a day and headed back to Seeley. That night was a simple dinner cooked at the house before heading to bed rather early.
