Fifteen years ago, Mr S-P came home with a rumbly, smoky first generation Toyota 4Runner. He had bought it from some guy on base in North Dakota, fully aware that the engine was in sorry shape and the exterior was, well, let's use the word "rugged." Our oldest daughter was a teenager, but not yet old enough to get her driver's license at the time. Her father used some of the best dad wisdom I've seen. He told her that if she was going to drive on his auto insurance policy, she was going to tear apart and rebuild her own car, so she knew what to do with one when it inevitably broke down in the middle of nowhere. If only I had known then that that truck would be with us forever.
The truck has been rebuilt more than once. It has confounded the owners (and Mr S-P and our kid each consider it theirs), and it has frustrated auto shops. It has cost more money than a new car with a warranty ever would. Strangers come up and offer money for it all the freaking time. And it has even been stolen and recovered once. Our daughter said that she doesn't care about pretty much anything else of ours, but that truck is her inheritance.
Stuff breaks on it regularly. The whole reason he went out and bought some guy's ratty farm truck early this year was the 4Runner needed significant attention, and he wanted to be able to tear it apart again yet still be able to get up to the cabin.
Today we took the farm truck up to Fraser, the sister town to the ski community of Winter Park. There was a guy up there who had acquired a first gen 4Runner, and he was parting it out. We got a topper with a terrific welded cage of a roof rack. He also got the two front seats, and the seller threw in a replacement rear seat belt (the current one tightens down continuously and never releases, making riding in the back very uncomfortable.) Unfortunately, the seat belt didn't seem to make it in the truck. The topper almost didn't as well. It was a snug fit. The seller had to get his neighbors to come help load it.
We had intended on coming home through Rocky Mountain National Park, not realizing we had to have a reservation just to be admitted and allowed to drive through. We turned around at the Park entrance, drove back past lakes Grand and Granby, and came home roughly the same way we went to Fraser. It was a long, long day, but it sure was a nice drive in the mountains.
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