Debbie

I think it is time to tell you something about our friend "Debbie".
She has been with us right from the start of our trip in SEA and she will accompany us hopefully right to the end in DEN.
Debbie is our rental car, named so after her licence plates "7DEB734". 

She's a Chevvy Tahoe, but not as we had expected a 4WD drive vehicle, only 2WD - rear wheel drive. Everyone we have told this was very much surprised, as no one had ever seen a Tahoe with 2WD only. We had rented a SUV and the questions is: can a SUV be "2WD" only? I admit, that we didn't check if the car had 4WD, when we rented it, because nobody was expecting a 2WD "SUV". On the other hand it saves us probably some gas on those long highway trips between sites.
But I have to say that (so far) she got us to all the places we had wanted to go; especially up to King Mountain, to Mt. Baldy for the evening flights and to Phillips Ridge.

Debbie on Coyote (King Mtn)

But at times she was 'bitching' around a bit by loosing air in some tires; so far we had to get 2 tires fixed...
And she can also be pretty thirsty on those steep mountain tracks.
But she holds all our luggage easily, is pretty comfy and at times takes Jim with his glider as well.
Additionally we also call our GPS "Debbie": it's quite knowledgable; knows most tracks we use to get to launches, all of our hotels and much more (ie tire shops...).

On Sat, 12.July, she was in a particularily bad mood: so far we always had been able to reach a tire shop before we had to change the tire ourselves, but today Stacy got a flat tire while driving down from Crawford Ridge.The tire had lost too much air in order to be safely driven to the next tire shop, so Stacy and  Jim put on the spare tire. Luckily we could get it fixed in Randolph.

late saturday afternoon repairs in Randolph (UT)

Sun, 13.July: on top of Lookout Mtn (Glenwood Springs, CO) another spell of bad mood: she doesn't seem to like it, when we 'beat' her up these steep mountain tracks... Stacy and Jim, having by now learned how to do it quickly, changed the tire in about 20 minutes - thanks guys!

...of course she's also an 'official' PG carrier...