Melted...

So, we totally enjoyed our little yellow wheeler on this trip.  It made for all sorts of fun pictures for me and it was dedicated to getting us where we wanted to go.  We've enjoyed that wheeler for years.  It's made countless trips up Birch canyon and brought back children, milk weed, caterpillars, and so many sticks and rocks.  It's been good to us.  It tried to warn us that something was wrong.  It started to cut out on bumpy roads.  We had little warnings, but we didn't listen.  It had no choice but to catch on fire and burn up, leaving Mike and Scott stranded miles from home.

 The day started out great.  They made it up a technical trail and had a whole lot of fun. 
On the way home, something sparked underneath and caught the owner's manual on fire and all the electrical stuff.  Mike noticed that it was hot and melted, and without thinking, he stuck his gloved hands on the back plastic to see if it was hot.  It melted to his glove and then erupted in flames.  He tried to bomb down the hill to the river as flames licked his back.  He got to a little stream and they frantically tried to put out the fire.  They were able to save it from complete destruction, but they were still miles from home.  They had to push it up hills, over fallen trees, and through all sorts of obstacles.  Someone passing through gave them a hand and when they got to a place where they could bring in a truck, Mike rode the motorcycle home while Scott waited with the wheeler.

We were all pretty sad to see Mike pull up with a burned wheeler.  It doesn't look too bad when you first check it out, but it's a total loss.

After taking it to the dealership, we found out that new parts would be more expensive than it's worth.  Sad, sad, Schwabbies.

We are really grateful for all sorts of things though.  Neither Mike nor Scott were hurt.  Mike had gloves on, or touching the plastic would have ruined his hands.  He escaped with just a few burns and scrapes.
That's really all that matters.  We have loved that wheeler and it brought us numerous hours of fun.  We're sad to have such a crappy thing happen, but so glad that it wasn't worse.

The battery on my new camera died after the firework pictures the night before, so I don't have any of my own pictures of the reunion or anything that happened on that last day.  We packed up and headed out before too long.  Mike wanted to see some of the cars at the Cruise in. 
So we loaded up our sad and melted wheeler and pointed the Leprechaun towards home.  It was a really fun long weekend.