Family Sprinter Van Roadtrip- Days 6-9 Heading to Badlands...until...

In November 2022, we bought a 2008 sprinter van and set out to make it worthy of a month long family road trip across the US, which we completed in June of '23....here is how it went!

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Saturday June 10th, we ate breakfast in the sprinter van before we hit the road towards Badlands National Park. We realized that we would need some sort of AC unit as the temperatures were starting to rise very quickly making sleeping a little difficult the night before. As we were heading out of town we stopped by a Menard's to pick up a Midea Portable AC unit. As we get parked we realized the boys were sound asleep in their car seats so I opted to stay in the van with them, while David ran in to grab the AC unit. As I was sitting in the running van, I started to smell something rubbery and decided to shut the van off until David could took a look. Upon quick inspection, everything looked ok so we continued our journeys to Badlands National Park. About 2 miles into our journey, David suddenly felt the steering get very heavy and then quickly realized the Power Steering Pump had failed. Which lead to the serpentine belt failing that also took the lower radiator hose with it..... this all happened in Robbinsdale, MN (about 2 miles from my Grandma Cooke's new place!) Thankfully Nate and Cheryl were available to help save us! Nate ran David to different Auto Parts stores to get parts and he helped "temporarily" fix Ellie to get us back to Lino Lakes until our ID Parts order arrived on Tuesday. In the meantime Cheryl drove me and the boys over to my Grandma's house for a quick unplanned visit. Grandma Cooke was thrilled to have her Great Grandsons over at her new place!

On Sunday we helped cousin Nate do some yard work while David worked on installing an exhaust/intake for our new AC unit and finished removing the broken parts while waiting on the new parts to show up.

Since Monday are a regular work week for Nate and Dan at their home, I wanted to do something with the boys to get them out of the house for a couple hours so we ended up borrowing Nates car and meeting my mom's childhood best friend Debbie Harris . We had a nice lunch together at the Muddy Cow and then a park playdate for the boys. It was perfect weather with a nice breeze to run off some energy. Luckily some parts arrived early and David was able to get mostly everything installed making tomorrow a hopefully easy day.

On Tuesday Nate let us borrow his car again I drove to Bloomington, MN to meet up at Nana Nelsons place for lunch while David put the remaining new parts on Ellie and gave her a thorough shakedown. After our visit with Nana, we drove back to Dan and Nate's, did some laundry, had 1 last dinner together, and showers before we finally hit the road with our repaired Sprinter Van! We stopped at Clear Lake rest area in Jackson, MN for the night which is about 5 hours away from Badlands National Park.