Zion National Park

October 2, 2009

This morning we left Bryce Canyon and headed for Zion. The drive there was pretty uneventful (which is always good). We collected 2 routes in Zion when I noticed the van was getting hot inside and a computer started beeping. I jumped in the back near the computers and it was really, really warm back there. I looked at the AC controls and sure enough they were on AC but nothing was coming out of the vents. I never would have predicted that would happen today...our rear AC was broken. We had to take a detour to a Ford shop to figure out what the problem was. The mechanic determined that the "door" inside the AC unit was broken. After some discussion we decided that since they didn't have the part to fix it and we don't care how "pretty" the truck looks (as long as it works) we all decided that taping up the door would be the best solution for now. After about 2 hours we were on the road again. We headed back up to the park and collected some more routes. During collection I got an error that a computer was not responding and realized it had shut off. We discovered a bad power supply. We had to take another detour to Best Buy with hope of finding a power supply that would work. Luckily we found one and at 7:00pm we changed the power supply in the parking lot. It worked! At 8:00pm we finally got to eat dinner and at 9:30pm we finally checked into the hotel for the night.