Our RV Adventures

Catching up on 5/21

After spend the night in Amarillo in a very nice Quality Inn, especially for $53/ night (senior discount), we started out with a really good free breakfast at the hotel, before finally getting on the road about 7am.

About 1pm we stopped for lunch at a Raisin’ Cane’s Chicken Fingers on the east side of Tulsa. And in case anyone wonders, we also left the truck running and the AC going for Mister whenever we stopped. Usually he never even woke up.

We first discovered Raisin’ Cane’s while we were gate guarding near Bryan/College Station last year. Really, really good, not only the chicken, but the Cole slaw too.

Then it was back on the road until the the west side of St. Louis when we stopped for supper at a Steak N Shake for dinner. Anticipating our visit to the Cincinnati area later this year, we both had Steak N Shake’s version of Chili 5 Ways.

We both agreed that although it was really good, it wasn’t quite as good as the Gold Star Chili restaurant’s version found in the Cincinnati area.

After also getting gas we were back on the road for our last couple of hours, finally arriving at our motel in Vandalia a little before 10pm. Another long, long travel day. Glad we had a reservation since they were full and turning people away when we arrived.

Makes us really appreciate our normal travel days in the rig: Leave at 10am, get there by 2pm.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll have time to get more caught up on the blog post of our days here with the family so far. We’ll see.

I did hear from the Service Manager that they found damage to our rig’s diesel fuel tank, and that it will have to be replaced. Don’t know yet how much extra time that will take.

It’s always something.

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Thought for the Day:

It’s always something.

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Wednesday 5/20

Jan and I were on the road by 6am, heading for Vandalia, IL 1534 miles away. We didn’t want to miss a long-scheduled family reunion with Jan’s sister Debbie and her family, so a road trip was in order. We planned on making it in two days, stopping for the night in Amarillo, TX.

But about 10 miles south of Flagstaff, our journey came to a halt with a big BOOM! But with not as much resulting excitement as our blowout on the rig a few weeks ago. So, yes, my second Goodyear tire, the driver’s rear, blew out.

The day before we left, I’d had replaced my passenger front tire because the Goodyear on that wheel had popped open along a sidewall seam and had also developed a wobble. The tire guy at Big O checked my other tires and said they looked good.

I had just started to jack up the truck when an Arizona Highway Patrol officer pulled in behind me. He was kind of worried because we were parked just past an entrance ramp onto the Interstate, but he put out some cones to help guide the traffic entering the Interstate around us.

After getting the truck jacked up, I lowered the spare tire from underneath the truck bed, and quickly discovered that Goodyear had struck again.

Last February, my son Chris had swapped out my right front tire with my spare because it felt a little funny, like it was out of balance, or something. I figured it would still be a good spare for a few miles if I needed one.

But when I looked at the spare I found that it had blown out while it was underneath the truck. It looked like it had exploded from the inside, blowing several large chunks of rubber out of the sidewall. You might think that this might have been caused by road debris, maybe even from something thrown out from our rig blowout, but no. The damage was on the topside of the tire where it was shielded up against the bottom of the bed. The tire had just blown out all on its own.

I called my Good Sam ERS and told them I needed either a new tire, or a tow. But when I was told 45 minutes to an hour, the Highway Patrol officer said he would have to call the Patrol’s tow service because they could be there in 20 minutes, and he wanted us off the road as quick as possible. And of course I would have to pay for that tow. But Good Sam said I might be able to get reimbursed.

So, 55 minutes later, the OFFICIAL tow service shows up.

And an hour later, and $143 poorer, we were sitting in the waiting area of a Big O Tire Store on the east side of Flagstaff having two new tires ($273) put on our truck. Finally  two and a half hours after the BOOM we were back on the road.

We had planned to have lunch in Gallup, NM, but ended up at a Carl’s Jr. in Holbrook instead. I tried their new All-American Burger that has a little of everything, including a hamburger, a hot dog, and even kettle-fried potato chips.

It was good, but confusing, with the taste of both a hamburger and a hot dog.

Mister of course was with us, but couldn’t settle down, going back and forth from the front seat to the back. This is the first time he’s traveled more than a few miles in anything other than the rig, and he couldn’t figure out what was going on. He just knew something wasn’t right.

What Jan and I missed most was our bathroom in the rig, especially with signs like these at the rest areas.

It was a real pain keeping track of upcoming rest areas, figuring how far to the next one, and then finding it closed. It’s much more convenient to just pull over when you have a wide shoulder and take care of things.

For dinner, we ended up at another Carl’s Jr., this one in Santa Rosa, NM. But this time I just ordered a Double Bacon Cheeseburger which was really good.

We finally pulled in to the Quality Inn in Amarillo about 10:45pm, very tired after a long day. Besides our tire delay, we lost two hours changing from  Arizona’s non-Daylight Savings Time (the equivalent to Pacific Time) to Texas’ Central Daylight Time.

I’ll catch up more tomorrow.

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Thought for the Day:

Anything But Goodyear.

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