Don't rent from Enterprise!

This is a little late in posting, but we had quite the adventure a few weeks ago that is worth writing about!

We were on the way to our friend Shantay's wedding in Boise. Rather than heading straight to Boise, we took the scenic route (not!) via Pocatello to look at a new truck. In the mean time, Andy found a new hunting rifle that he wanted to check out in Smithfield. Needless to say, we took the back roads through Nowheresville, when the car made an unusual sound. We pulled over to see if we could find anything wrong, but everything looked normal, so we began to drive again. All of the sudden my purple Honda decided she'd had enough. The check engine light came on right in front of the only building for miles around: Thomas Mercantile/Sinclair. Welcome to Swan Lake, ID population 101. This is where we spent most of the evening.

In Andy's words, "I've always been the country boy helpin' city folk out, but suddenly I was the city boy.."

This was the one-pump gas station that we hung out at during our stay in Swan Lake. There were several heads on the wall and I promise you there was one of everything in that store. From fabric to motor oil, from welding supplies to peanuts, from ice cream to toilet paper; you name it, I bet it was there. And, it was the local post office.

Here we are sitting on the generators used to heat the store. They did a pretty good job of keeping us warm. What you can't see are our cell phones plugged into the only empty outlets in the store. Our phones were crucial if we wanted to make it out of this one horse town alive!

The part of the story you don't know is that we had prepared for this trip in advance and rented a car because both of our cars were right at 200,000 miles. When Andy went to pick up our rental from Enterprise, he was told that they didn not have a car for us. Please explain to me how we reserved a car a week and a half in advance and they didn't have one there for us? This is when we decided to take my car because it got better gas mileage.

It gets even better! We had also reserved a hotel in Boise for the weekend, but were obviously unable to get there. So Andy calls up and asks if we can cancel our reservation or transfer them to a hotel in Pocatello. Nope! Priceline= nonrefundable and nontransferable. Oh, did I mention that we had an appointment at the car dealership that we weren't going to make? Andy hops on the phone again to tell our pal there that we can't come. He calls back and tells us he is sending someone to come down and pick us up to take us to Pocatello. So now we have to find a place to stay. We are back and forth on the phone making arrangements and I hear Andy say, "You don't happen to have a we're-broken-down-in-the-middle-of-nowhere deal, do you?" Then he busts up laughing saying, "Sweet! We'll take it!" Turns out some places really do help you out when you need it! We were upgraded to a lovely suite and it was cheaper than the original room!

A summary of the rest of the weekend:
1. We bought the truck we had our eye on in Pocatello. (That's how it works, right? One car breaks down and you just run out and buy another?)
2. Found the only car hauler around to pull my car back home. (It was only 20 miles in the opposite direction.)
3. Attempted to load the car onto the trailer. (It wouldn't drive.)
4. Dropped my car and the hauler off in Logan. (Still wouldn't drive.)
5. Didn't make it to Shantay's wedding. (Sorry!)

Moral of the story: Don't rent from Enterprise!