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| Interior detail of the upper lobby of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas. (click to enlarge) |
Leaving Las Vegas, we drove north on I-15 with Colorado as our destination. Today would be a ‘travel’ day and the longest single drive thus far. Traffic was moderate and, it turned out, the drive was unexpectedly spectacular.
Starting in the area of the Nevada/Arizona border and continuing all the way north on I-15 through Utah then east on I-70, the drive provided us with some of the most amazing scenery I have seen anywhere in America. I would say it rivals driving through New England in the fall, of course, with dramatically different landscape and geology. The only complaint is the speed limit on I-15 is 80 mph (130 kph) so concentration on driving is imperative. There shouldn’t be a whole lot of looking around while driving at that speed. A slower pace would allow a bit more relaxed driving as well as more time to enjoy the scenery.
It was my day to navigate from the back seat and I was unable to make any images of this spectacular scenery so you will just have to take my word for it. Sorry.
As we approached the Utah/Colorado border, my friend’s 2012 Subaru Outback (our traveling vehicle with only 29,000 miles when we left) threw some sort of trouble code which disabled the cruise control, the anti-lock brake system and the “Brakes” light started flashing on the dashboard. He immediately pulled over. I pulled out the owner’s manual and started searching for the meaning of the, now critical, issue before us. It seemed from the owner’s manual the most likely cause was something in the evaporative emissions system. We opened the hood (bonnet) and checked the brake fluid, which was full, then decided it was most likely safe to drive to Grand Junction, Colorado to spend the night and have the Subaru looked at the next morning at the local dealership.
We arrived safely and the car seemed to drive perfectly so we were anxious to find out how troublesome and how much money it cost to repair whatever may have gone wrong.
After a late dinner at a nearby restaurant, we settled in for the night looking forward to what adventures we would encounter the next day.
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Thanks for looking. Enjoy!
Dennis A. Mook
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More likely than not, the problem with the Subaru is a bad anti-lock brake sensor. This does not mean that the car is unsafe, it's just means that the brakes will work like every car did in the 1960's. It will stop safely. More problematic is that the cruise control, which relies on data from the anti-lock sensor, will not work until the problem is fixed. This is because, unlike 1960's cars, cruise control is now electronic and does not work using a vacuum motor and cables like they did "back in the day". Sometimes technology is good but it seems that today it's mostly unreliable in situations where you are miles from a shop. Hope everything worked out OK and on the next road trip, be sure to take a cheap OBD scanner along. Helps to get an answer that is accurate versus the scare tactics modern automakers employ on their dashboards when one of their creations go haywire. Looking forward to more Road Trip Pix!
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