Elvira has entered the building...

A little rock crawler we saw on our drive.

Stu has been working on fixing a leak in the cooling system of the Jeep, one that appeared after he changed out the antifreeze (which required him to remove the front bumper - EEK). He's been so patient with the process and the amount of time and parts runs that have been required.

But it made us think twice about how long we want/need to keep the Jeep in the family. We bought it used in December 2017 with 58k miles on it and it has served us well. That's not to say we haven't replaced a lot of things like tires, brakes, struts, etc. but overall, major repairs haven't been an issue. I mean, it has 123k now.

Over the couple of years we have researched and discussed various brands and models. We were pretty convinced it would be a Subaru Forester (only issue was the closest dealer is almost an hour away). All the ratings, including resale if necessary, were excellent. We planned on buying new.

But life intervenes and we felt the time was fast aproaching to buy. We have had a GM rewards card for many years and accumulated almost 440,000 points. That converted into $4400 we could use towards a down payment but only on a GM car. The more we talked about it, new just didn't make sense when compared to a GM Certified used car. We settled on searching for a 2025 Chevrolet Equinox with less than 20,000 miles, preferably not a black or white one but it had to have power driver seat adjustments and heated seats (yeah, we're that old).

Well, the best laid plans and all that...we found exactly what we wanted (other than color) at a dealer that was 148 miles away. Hey, that's only a three hour drive, right? Yeah - except when it's not off an interstate. Regardless, we emailed the salesman and made arrangements to drive there yesterday.

So, Thursday was a five hour drive with stops. A nice mostly country ride, but a bit tiring. We paired my phone with CarPlay before taking it out for a drive. I loved that the seat could be adjusted high enough for me and it handled like a dream, had a ton of great features (that are mostly electronic and will take me months to figure out). We made the deal but by then it was well after dark. We headed off to dinner at Texas Roadhouse and a hotel (Best Western, like new and the nicest we've been in for years) with plans to pick the car up in the morning.

After a fitful night of sleep, we went back to the dealership, got the 30 day free trial of OnStar® set up and headed home. The drive was not quite as long due to the routing from our breakfast stop and was mostly through rain. Fortunately not so bad we couldn't see easily. 

She fits in the garage beside Blaze (who is only there temporarily) and was happy to get out of the weather. Now we have to move everything over from the Jeep, then clean up the Jeep and get it ready to sell (hopefully locally for the best $$).

Oh, her name? Came to me immediately Wednesday night - ELVIRA! 

Ciao for now!