Road Trip – Day One

Last week, my hubby and I, along with my sister and her hubby took a road trip in our RV. This is the longest trip the RV has been on since we’ve owned it, and boy, howdy was it an adventure!!

We got a bit of a late start on Tuesday, eventually stopping for lunch at Sidelines Pizza in Kalamath Falls (with cute blue owl fire hydrants!) It was hot, and they had nice air-conditioning and good pizza. On the way, we saw 3 bald eagles–one adult and two youngsters–perched on telephone poles near Kalamath Lake.

By later afternoon we’d made the check point at the Oregon California border and crossed over into Modoc National Forest. There are lots of trees there, but almost no underbrush compared to Oregon’s forests. No wonder Bigfoot hangs out in Oregon and Washington–more hiding spots! 😉

I was driving down the hills just after Susanville, CA when a terrible hissing/clatter noise filled the RV, like the thing was full of rattle snakes. Then chunks of rubber flew into the road. My sister yelled for me to stop, and I pulled over to the shoulder. We’d blown a tire.

Our rig has dual tires on the back and of course we blew the most difficult to fix inner tire. BUT there was a gas station with a nice level parking lot just a few yards away, so we limped the rig over to set about repairs.

My sister’s hubby had brought a 20-ton jack (this thing lifts houses), and my hubby had asked someone how to change that inner tire “just in case” a few years ago. With the help of ice to cool the overheated bolts, WD-40 (and some brute muscle), they got the inner tire off and replaced it with our spare. (Did I mention it was still hot? Like 101° in the shade? Did I mention it wasn’t easy, and also involved an ax, a crowbar, and lots of sweating? Consider it mentioned. 😉 )

The outer tire had been doing so much work to take the weight off the failing tire, that all the tread had worn off and that tire was now nearly bald. We still had a 40 minute drive to our camp (it was still around 100 °) but we started off, easy as we could, hoping we wouldn’t blow that bald tire.

Good news! We made it to camp (Bordertown Casino and RV Park, in Nevada) grabbed a quick dinner, and called it a night! Next day: gotta get new tires!