The Safari's most redeeming quality was that it was charcoal grey. I loved the color. I'm not sure if I decided that the baby's color (a post still not written) would be charcoal grey before or after the van arrived, but it made me more accepting of the van in general. There were also some very nice sticker decals in the window, one of a pink hibiscus, another a green dinosaur. A brontosaurus. These also earned the vehicle more points. I insisted that no one was driving it anywhere until it had been detailed, and that I was not detailing it myself. So we paid (for the first time in our married lives) for someone to clean a vehicle. It may be the last time in our married lives too--although the price was reasonable, the cleaning job was much less thorough than the Aaron Beutler Acceptable Standard (ABAS). But at least I would sit in it afterward.
We took a few drives. Melvin was envious and wanted to buy it as his new truck. But I said no. I decided it was ok to be up high on the road. Aaron bought new tires for it and repaired the all wheel drive. The Safari became our dependable winter transportation option. Aaron said he felt safe with me driving it to Logan or Salt Lake, and didn't worry about me sliding off of the road because of the all wheel drive. And I admit, it was a very nice feature, once Aaron had it working.
The winter passed, and the baby was still coming, and the Safari still had 8 seats. I started to remind Aaron that I had requested a larger vehicle, not an older one. And so of course he started looking at options for adding a 9th seat.
There were a few jump seats on the market, but nothing super affordable. We scoured eBay, online sites, and salvage yards. One afternoon Aaron took me on a "date" to the unofficial Franklin junkyard. Sporting increasingly wet canvas coveralls, we waded through 3 foot drifts of snow, searching the endless rows of cars for the perfect seat. I think the directions we received from the owner were something along the lines of "You'll see a green truck and then another truck and then turn after the next van and I think there's one there."
It wasn't there. I decided that wading through a salvage yard in wet coveralls while 6 months pregnant did not count as a real date.
Finally, I found a wrecked in the Idaho Salavage Yard and Aaron went up to get it. He sawed it away from the other seat and brought it home. It only took him a week to stew over the design until he created a plan to modify it, bolt into the floor and we were in business.
A nine person GMC Safari.
Every woman's dream.
The 9th seat was shaped in that it was only actually usable by a bucket carseat, or a person with legs no more than 4 inches in diameter. That limited the front row passengers of course, but not too much, as most of our boys fit the 4 inch diameter leg criteria. At least until they turn 12.
Our first family trip as a family of 9 was on the 4th of July. Normally, we are committed for that day, (Dayton festivities call all Beutlers, near and far) but this year the city had celebrated on the 2nd. We decided to go on an adventure. Aaron wanted to go looking for his buddy Craig's lost bike. It had been sacrificed at Young Women's camp a few weeks earlier, lost in the wilderness on a trek for a lost city (yet another story for another day) and we thought it would be the perfect offering of friendship to produce the lost bike. And also, it sounded adventurous. Aaron was planning to go in the truck with the boys, but I wanted to spend the day together as a family, so we decided to take the Safari. We stopped at a grocery store on the way and bought some bottled water, cherries, apples, granola bars, and fruit snacks (all the necessities of life) and we headed up Blacksmith Fork Canyon.
The road was. . .. . . . treacherous. And bumpy. And lumpy. And long. And dirt. And dirty. And dusty. And pot-holed. At first it didn't seem too bad, and the further we went the worse it got. Aaron navigated through most of the nasty spots without too much jarring, and we trekked up the mountain. After a while though, the further we drove the more we worried about how we would ever get back. We wondered if there was a way to drive straight through, and come out somewhere else, but all the roads on the map ended up being . . . . .not roads in real life. Finally, it was getting later and Aaron decided the road was leading further from where the bike was and we'd better park and they would hike for a bit. He took the three older boys and iPad with him for navigation, I kept the four littles with me and most of the food.
It was a beautiful day. Warm, delightful, wildflowers blooming all over the mountain. I let the boys play on the road for a while, building mountains and rivers and rock piles (but not any that would make it impassable for vehicles of course). We took a walk down the road and took pictures of the different flowers. I rationed out the fruit snacks and we all drank plenty of water. It was lovely.
And then the sun went down, and the mosquitoes came out. They were EVERYWHERE!!!! I was trying to keep the baby from being eaten alive, and finally we went back to the van and shut the doors to keep out the bugs. I told the boys stories, and we watched it get dark outside, and I worried that the boys would be another hour or two and we would be cold and hungry and heading down the mountain in the dark. But they weren't! They came only 10 minutes later, which shocked me completely. Aaron said he decided they were never going to find the lost bicycle, and he was worried about getting down the road in the dark, so they had turned around. We turned around and began the trek back, still with some daylight left.
We didn't have a lot of daylight, and Aaron tried to keep the speed up as much as he could while navigating the treacherous potholes. We were doing okay, until we came to a really steep embankment and as he steered to the side to miss the ruts there was a thump, and a grating sound, and it just kept going and going, something scraping the underside of our poor Safari. It was the beginning of death for our engine.
After the horrible hill, Aaron stopped and looked under the van but didn't see anything. We kept driving, worried about getting our family off the mountain and the rural road. Suddenly the oil gauge on the van dropped completely. Not a good sign. Aaron stopped and put more oil in the van, we had a spare quart. It went up and then dropped again. We were doomed. The van started making really odd noises. But we had started heading downhill. The moment we reached the main road was elating, we figured maybe we would see someone and be able to get some help. But alas, no one came across our downhill coasting. We must have coasted for a few miles before we reached an uphill section. We had to decide if we would wait there, start the van and drive, or get out and push. We went with the push option. It took every single ounce of boy power we could get, all the boys hopped out of the van and pushed from whatever door they could access. We had boys in back, boys in the sides, and little cheerleaders in the middle seat. They wanted to help, mind you, but we insisted they had to be able to jump back in the car fast enough to not be left behind. It worked! We got another 1/2 mile to coast. And then another uphill section.
We must have traveled this way for 2 hours, hopping out to push, coasting, repeating. I was amazed that the boys didn't complain one time about how hard it was. They just kept pushing, jumping, kept going. It was getting late. The little ones fell asleep for a little while, I was glad Abrahm was sleeping. Aaron found another quart of something and started the van for one particularly uphill stretch and then we went back to coasting. He is pretty sure that solidified the engine death sentence.
We finally made it to a paved road--we could see lights! We thought it was a campground or something,but it wasn't. It was just a lighted sign. And still no cell phone signal. We had been trying to get signal the last couple hours, but that area of the country is wilderness and determined to stay that way indefinitely. We debated waiting at the intersection, or splitting up, or pushing/coasting some more. Joseph and Gideon offered opinions, I don't remember now what they were but they might. Finally, Malachi said we needed to pray that someone would please come and help us. So we did. And then we decided to keep pushing/coasting on the paved road in the hope that someone would be on it. It was now 11:00 p.m. or thereabouts.
We pushed and coasted, and we were getting tired. And then, lights, and a truck, and a person to come and help us! An angel dressed in camouflage and driving a maroon truck towed us all the way to Hyrum convenience store. It took 40 minutes. We arrived at midnight and Grandpa Jim came out to pick us up. I had called him in the canyon as we drove, finally getting signal. He wasn't appreciative of the midnight call (I'm sure it reminded him of being on call back in the day), but he didn't hesitate to come to the rescue. Grandma Dona made us all beds and we went to bed. It was midnight.
We were just about to hit the pillow when Aaron got a text from our neighbor asking us to please put our barking dog inside. Poor guy!! He was sweet enough to take care of our abandoned dog that night and let her out again in the morning. And so we slept. And we were safe. And we prayed grateful prayers that we were all ok, and all together. The next day we debated what to do. Aaron finally decided that he wanted to repair the Safari so we could drive home. So he got a ride to the store, took a boy or two, purchased a new oil pan and changed it out. He was gone for hours. I stayed at my parent's house, my mom and I trying to keep all the boys busy and happy for the entire day. When Mary called and offered to drive us home in her van, I wasted no time agreeing. I just wanted to be HOME!!!! So we got a ride home, the rest of it is a bit of a blur, the repairs Aaron made to the Safari did not work, and we ended up towing it home later that week with the truck. We priced out new engines and the price tag was such that it was left to sit pulled out of the way off the drive.
And sits there still.
