U-haulin'

I so wish I had taken a picture of all of my stuff packed up. As it is, you’ll just have to imagine it. Half of the boxes I packed were full of books. This could relate to my last blog post, but as an English major/Librarian, I classify most books to be in the “keep” category. If a book is outdated or I know I’ll never read it again, I’ll get rid of it. (Fun fact: librarians call this weeding. Apparently we’re all secretly avid gardeners.) However, I re-read a fair number of my books fairly often. Also, I have a pretty good collection of children’s books that will come in very handy if I ever have children. But this post is not about books. It’s about the day I got a U-haul trailer and moved to Colorado.

For the most part, the trip was painless. The trailer was heavy enough that we couldn’t go the speed limit through the mountain passes, but I expected that so it wasn’t very frustrating. Then we hit flat ground and an Interstate that posted the speed limit as 75 mph. I tried to make up for lost time.

About 45 miles away from our intended fuel stop, I looked at my fuel gage. The needle was veering very close to empty, and we were in the middle of Nowheresville, Utah, population 0. Every exit we passed from that time on was a ranch exit with no services. I started getting nervous. We reduced the speed back to 55 to save gas, and coasted down all of the hills. The needle hit the empty mark, and passed it. But the car didn’t stop, so I kept going and continued to watch the needle go down. This was not how I wanted to find out how much gas my car could hold.

Finally, a few miles after crossing the border into Colorado we found an exit that didn’t contain the blaring No Services sign. I gratefully turned to the exit and headed into town. Apparently a town with an air pump but no gas station qualifies as a town with services.

We got on the frontage road and kept driving. At least now when my car broke down I wouldn’t be on the freeway. And then, shining like a beacon in the middle of a hurricane, I saw it. Just one little word:

Conoco

I’m still confused how we made it to a gas station 35 miles after I noticed my gas gage was on empty, but I’m not going to question it. I’m just going to be very, very grateful. Also, I don’t think I’ll try to keep up with the flow of traffic when I’m pulling a trailer ever again.