Originally posted from Grand Junction, Colorado, this update was split into three parts (see related articles) for the sake of reducing the loading time due to the images involved…

On the more negative side, we had a small auto accident that is proving to be somewhat of a headache at the moment. We were sitting stationary in a line to go into Zion National Park, with six cars in front of us, and my foot on the brake when, suddenly, a car ran up the back of us.
There were a couple of French girls in the car and they’d been looking down, hunting for the National Parks Pass and misjudged the distance to our van.

The accident only happened at 5mph, and they hit the spare tyre, so the damage was minimal, but dealing with the insurance companies has so far been a real hassle. We spoke with an AllState agent named Ellen (she refused to give her last name) in Murray, Utah who basically told us that even though we were sitting still, we had to pay the excess (aka “deductible”) of US$250.00 before they’d do anything to recover the money. For two and three quarter hours we argued back and forth, trying to find out why *we* needed to pay for it, when it was not our fault.

Eventually, speaking to Mike Neely back in Louisiana, we made sense of the situation and it turns out we need to deal with Alamo Rentals since that was where the French girls rented their car. Why Ellen (who won our SPOTD award) would not just tell us that and had us in the blazing Utah sun for almost three hours, we do not know.

Categories: Travel, Odyssey 2001