Our Intended Trip

For those of you who have been following along with our journey across the United States to find a location where my MCAS symptoms are better, you might notice that this post looks a bit different than the previous ones. This was on purpose, because we didn’t plan on making this stop. Our truck decided to.

We were planning to spend the morning driving through New Hampshire’s White Mountains before continuing east into Maine—a drive of about five and a half hours to Sebasticook Lake Campground. We were going to stay there for a couple of days while Meg had important meetings and then continue on to Southwest Harbor, Maine. Once again…our truck had other plans.

About 45 minutes into our drive I start to notice the truck is getting a bit hot, I can even start to feel it on my feet. Moments later the radiator fan kicks in hard and the engine coolant temperature spikes – we are officially in trouble. We slow down, I crank the heat in the cab to pull heat from the engine bay and limp to the next exit where we park at a gas station to discover that the truck has leaked antifreeze.

Unable to find any antifreeze to purchase in walking distance at our exit we attempt to make it to the nearest auto parts store and end up just barely making it to the next exit where there is absolutely nothing, except a beautiful wooded campground, with a vacancy! I literally coast into the campground, engine off, no power steering, no power brakes.

So, that is how the truck chose we were going to stay at the Rest-N-Nest campground in East Thetford, VT, not drive to Maine.

Thankfully the campground was awesome, shaded and spacious sites, a nice shallow swimming pool and a giant playground for the kids. The staff was very kind and had no issues with me working on the truck, even offered to let me use their shop and tools if I needed it. Thankfully we have “the garage” in the back of the truck so most of what I needed was already there.

Initially I couldn’t find an obvious reason for a leak and suspected the coolant reservoir cap (aka the degas cap) had failed when the truck’s coolant system pressure increased allowing coolant to spray out and literally hit the fan (the radiator fan) sending the coolant everywhere in the engine bay. Topping the coolant system off with water I was able to make it to O’Reiley’s Auto Parts two minutes before they closed to pick up a new cap, some other essentials and a coolant pressure testing tool which lets you pressurize the coolant system without running the engine to check for leaks.

After pressurizing the system at the campsite, I started feeling around at all the coolant hose connections to see if I could find any leaks. The first hose I tested was the upper radiator hose and the connection at the engine block seemed like it was allowing coolant to seep out a little bit. Curious, I wiggled the hose just a bit and the hose promptly responded by flying off the fitting, gushing antifreeze everywhere, problem identified.

Ford uses quick connect hose fitting that have a single small tension wire which is bent to sit in three grooves in the each female end of the hose. That tension wire is spring loaded so when you push the fitting onto the male fitting on the truck the spring loaded wire snaps down into place in a groove on the male connection holding the hose in place. Cool design….until it fails.

The hose proved nearly impossible to get off because you have to pick that tension wire out of the hose end in a space smaller than your finger. Once I finally did get the hose off I could celebrate only for a minute because then we had an entirely new problem. The auto parts store had a hose in stock (apparently they failed so much that Ford redesigned them and auto parts stores keep them on the shelf), but now I had no way to drive, so how do you get the hose.

We are in the middle of nowhere Vermont, no Uber, no Lift, no DoorDash, so who saves the day? A good old fashioned taxi, who decided instead of picking me up and taking me to the store and back, he would rather buy the $150 hose himself, trusting I would pay him back and then deliver it to the campground at 8:30pm.

New hose in hand I was able to quickly (because you know, they are quick connect hoses after all), install the new hose, top off the coolant level and pressure test the system…..and success! I am now sitting poolside, over six hours away in SouthWest Harbor Maine in Smugglers Den Campground.

Looking back, we were incredibly lucky. The truck failed within sight of a campground instead of halfway through the mountains. The campground owners were welcoming, a taxi driver trusted a complete stranger enough to buy a $150 hose on our behalf, and a repair that could have ended our trip became just another story we’ll laugh about later. Sometimes preparation matters, but sometimes people matter even more.

Our next leg of the trip is one I have been looking forward to for a long time. We are returning to one of our favorite vacation spots, the quiet side of Acadia National Park!