Tomorrow will have to be better because today followed the same trend as yesterday, although thankfully this time I had an undisturbed camp. It was cold as I made breakfast before I head off. I planned to stop in the next major town, Evanston, to do laundry, shopping and address some car issues. This would mean ducking into Wyoming briefly, then back into Utah.

When I unlocked and pulled on the driver’s door handle, I heard the unmistakeable noise of a mechanism breaking off and falling into the door. Door handle flappy, no getting in that way. And I was Miss. Bright Side, hoping to have a good day. At least it still opened from the inside, but to get out, I’d have to clamber through to the back and out the side door. Just another thing to add to the list.

In Evanston, laundry was the only piece of success I had. While the laundry was running I resolved to investigate the “Service Engine Soon” issue, which meant pulling the inside engine cover off. In doing so, I realised I had made a fatal mistake in my battery wiring, making it impossible for me to get the engine cover off. To get around it now would require disconnecting the cables from the battery terminals which I wasn’t going to do because it’s fiddly. I would need to cut the ground cable and put a connector in. Pissed at myself for such a stupid mistake, I reassembled the engine cover and by the time I was done repacking the van the laundry was done. One hour spent and not much progress.

Not having any cell service, I drove around town until I found a shopping centre. Before driving in to Evanston, I’d tried looking up a 99c store, only to find out they proudly serve California, Nevada, Arizona and Texas, but no other states. Sad face. I tried a Dollar Tree, but that was crap, selling mostly useless stuff instead of food. Having not been able to buy morning tea, I made a peanut butter wrap then decided to tackle my door issue since the door no longer opened from the inside either and there was an O’Reilly Auto Parts shop across the carpark. I found a sunny spot and got to work.

I eventually got the door open from the inside by repeatedly playing with the lock and inside door handle. I pulled the trim off (breaking trim clips in the process) and found that I had lost a spring from the handle. Predictable. It took me a while but I figured out how it went back on, so I dicked around for about an hour trying to get it back into place using a left finger through a hole in the side of the door and two fingers squeezed behind the window runners and shit inside the door. Needless to say, I had no success because eventually when I got the spring in place and attached it to the handle mechanism, there was no way to keep it all in place because a circlip had broken off and was nowhere to be found.

I went into O’Reillys and bought a packet of circlips for $4.50, a variety of sizes, only one of which would possible work. Another half hour of dicking around and I figured out that wasn’t going to work. Right. Now I would have to pilfer parts from the passenger side. Before doing anything major, I looked through the hole in the side of the door at the mechanism and discovered it wasn’t a circlip at all, it was a washer-looking thing, pressed onto a shaft. Another look at the bottom of the driver’s side door, I found the missing one, but it was useless to me. Once it was off, it was off. I tried fitting it back on anyway, but one pull of the handle flicked it off. Shit.

Defeated, I packed up, adding a selection of useless circlips to my tool collection. I also realised when I shut the door that there was a good chance I wouldn’t be able to get it open again, from the inside or out, but I left that to be dealt with later. I didn’t want to leave the trim off and have a huge piece of useless, fragile trim lying in the van. I’d like to note here that getting my tools out and packing up is nearly a pain in the arse, it means taking stuff out of the van, pulling heavy tools out, jamming everything back in its place because everything only just fits. Not helping.

I went back in to O’Reillys to ask if there was a wrecker in the area and had no joy. Right, I definitely wasn’t going to do an oil change, I was bound to put a hole through the sump or something. I moved on to grocery shopping at Walmart. The people in Walmart worsened my mood. Shouting kids and overweight people with ass cracks showing everywhere. A bag of Clementines was $5! I missed my 99c store where you can guess what the price of them was. I got my essentials and even a small bag of potato wedges to curb my grumbling tummy. I organised my shopping while I made a wrap to go with my wedges and finally sat down in the van to eat and watch people rudely leave their shopping trolleys right next to their cars instead of returning them to the racks in the carpark. Ignorant.

I drove out of Evanston, happy to see the back of it since it hadn’t been the most pleasant experience. All I did from there was drive. I drove past Bear Lake, then into Idaho, ticking another state off my list. Shortly after, I drove through Paris.

I listened to my audiobook, which was going painfully slowly, until I found camp in BLM land just south of Pocatello, as suggested by freecampsites.net. It was a perfect isolated spot amongst some mountains and I made it just before dark. Even has a bathroom. Hopefully I don’t burn myself or break anything while making dinner.

Not many photos today, I wasn’t in the mood. The drive was pretty enough, but not very photogenic, especially since I couldn’t get out of the driver’s door for a quick photo.