My weekend at OFFF

Yes, this is the only picture I took of my weekend at OFFF - Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival. Long story short on Friday the alternator went out in my van in the parking lot of Fabric Depot 45 miles north of where we were staying and where OFFF is held......my less than 3 year old van 3000 miles out of warranty.  Three AAA visits and two tows later my van came to sit in a Dodge dealership lot that thankfully had Saturday hours in the service department.  So $750 later I have my van back but the air conditioner no longer works - it worked when it went in.....it was too late to go back to the dealership so I left a message and Sam will deal with it today - he thinks they forgot to hook it back up after replacing the alternator. Obviously we won't drive 4 1/2 hours north for a fix so they'll have to contact our local Dodge to arrange for it.......Sam tried to fix it last night but it's too buried to do it easily. Luckily there were several cars of us at OFFF so I had loads of help and support from my friends but it did affect everyone's OFFF experience and I feel horribly about that. We will be filing a claim with Dodge to try and get reimbursement - an alternator shouldn't go out at 39,000 miles.....wish us luck with that.

We've had two Dodge Grand Caravans in the past - a 1990 we kept for 10 years and loved, then a 2000 we kept for 13 years which my cousin now has - it's still going strong at over 220,000 miles. This 2012 model we hated within months of buying it - they changed so much, including the transmission. We've been talking about getting rid of it all year and had decided we'd do it before winter.....guess we didn't dump it in time.......