Snippets from the Brodies: Plans Change… August 2nd

When we woke up the morning after Glacier National Park, the rain had well and truly settled in, and there was no sight of the mountains in the park at all! But seeing as we were planning on crossing the border back into Canada that morning anyway, driving right past the Waterton Lakes Park (the Canadian side of the Glacier National Park), we thought we’d give it a go, after a bit more sleep… But then we checked out email and discovered that there were a group of friends camping for the weekend in north west Montana, and we were welcome to join them, as Wes & Lianna were doing – that sounded fantastic, so we headed the longer but slightly quicker way around the bottom of Glacier National Park rather than back through it in the pouring rain. However… our plans soon changed, as our car brakes stopped working… Not very cool in the wet and on winding roads… So as handy as low gears are, it’s just not the same, and we decided to stop (fairly urgently!) and see if there was anything that we could do – turns out the brake fluid was pretty much pouring out… So we managed to drive very slowly to the next town (thankfully not too much traffic or traffic lights!) and got a bunch of brake fluid, as well as 2 rear wheel cylinders. Then managed to find an undercover spot in an old and no longer used servo, to undertake recovery works… Before discovering that not only was there no brake fluid left, as it was all over the wheel and the road, there were also no brakes left! As the back wheel was already off and Lawrie’s hands were already black, I went back in the rain to get some new brake shoes, which thankfully the spare parts place had (otherwise we would have been camping out in the old servo on the highway for the night!) – so after a couple of hours in the cold and rain, hopefully we’re right to go! Well the rear brakes on one side at least, not so sure about the other side! But they weren’t leaking at least… Turns out things aren’t quite so easy without all the usual mechanic’s tools!

So as it stands, so far we have made a few adjustments to the car… Drive belt, a pulley, got a water pump just in case we’re in the middle of nowhere when it fails, and replaced one rear wheel cylinder and brake shoes – the other rear brakes need to be fixed sometime soon, so hopefully that’s a little less eventful!!

We did end up heading to Lake Koocanusa in north west Montana to join the friends camping, but more on that later!

In the meantime, here are a couple of photos of the van… Not many, as it’s quite hard to show what it’s like from the inside – the esky/cooler is between the 2 front seats for easy access during the day, the rest of our food, cooking supplies etc etc are in plastic boxes under the bed, and our clothes are in plastic boxes at the end of the bed (the back door can now be opened from the inside only, but that doesn’t happen very often!) – other bits and pieces are stored in the car’s handy little pockets underneath the front seat and beside the bed in the back, as well things we don’t use very often in the bags we brought over, also under the bed….