Murphy’s Law Visits On Our Two Longest-Miles Travel Days

The drive north of Dallas and Fort Worth was very smooth with no traffic. I can’t imagine how long it would take to drive through here during the day and/or rush hour. The sun came up behind us and it was glorious to see it rise! So long since we have seen that. Continuing on, the area is pretty flat with occasional hills. We see some dairies, pastures, and wind farms. Kevin listened to an audio book from the library. This time he got one that is super long. I am reading a book on my iPad. Today and tomorrow are two of the LONGEST-MILES travel days we have had in these 3 years of full-time traveling.

8:43 a.m. I feel Kevin slowing down. I look ahead and see in the distance a semi-truck that has weaved in the lane; I think Kevin is making sure the driver is staying in the lane. Then Kevin pulls off to the side saying, “We blew a tire.” Oh no!!! He says he knew it blew because the trailer moved in a not-normal-rough-roads kind of way. We pull to the edge, thankful there is a good shoulder there along I-20. Bad news. The passenger side back tire blew and it blew off the valve stem of the tire in front of it and that one went flat immediately, too. The siding of HOWE (footnote 1) is blown out  and parts gone. Wires dangling down. I look up Progressive Insurance. I get on the app and start the process. Soon it requires a phone call and since I am deaf I hand it to Kevin. Through this, Kevin put his arms on my rolled down window and I was in the seat. I look at him and say WE ARE SAFE, HE DIDN’T WRECK, WE ARE OKAY, IT ISN’T RAINING, THE ROAD HAS A SHOULDER, WE HAVE CELL SERVICE. We have so much to be thankful for. He agrees. We are worried that the rear axle might be bent or broken. I look up RV repair places and find Happy Place Trailers in Abilene, TX. Kevin calls them and they say they close at noon but would be happy to check it out for us. (Yes, we do have a Tire Monitoring Pressure System and watch it closely. It didn’t show a problem until a few seconds after the tire blew.)

Back Tire Blown, Front Tire Valve Stem Gone & Tire Flat, Siding Completely Gone, Baird, TX 11/09/24

9:34 a.m. Progressive Insurance has been good about texting and letting us know that a service person will be arriving 60-75 minutes. They give us PUG’s Emergency Road Service contact phone number. Kevin calls him and tells him two tires were flat. Progressive asked if PUG is here and to text Y or N. I texted N and then PUG pulled up. Turns out he and his wife are headed to pick up their kid in college and he took this service call.

8:52 a.m. Kevin jumps in the truck with PUG and the front tire to get the valve stem replaced. They go to Love’s Truck Stop just down the road.

9:03 a.m. Kevin texts me Love’s doesn’t have the stem so they are going on to Abilene, 30 miles away. Kevin says he is sorry for leaving me in our truck along the side of the freeway and makes sure I was okay. I know for safety to put my seatbelt on while sitting here. That way if something hits the trailer, I won’t be thrown from the truck and then ran over. I started coming up with a plan in case HOWE is completely broken down here. There is a lot of damage.

9:16 a.m. Text with Kevin; I ask if PUG has any recommendations for places around here to take HOWE since it was thought perhaps the axle is broken. Not really, they are new to the area. So he does research on his phone and send me the address of Happy Place. 

9:47 a.m. Kevin texted and said “the place is cash only had to go to atm.” 

9:51 a.m. Kevin texted “Headed back.”

10:07 a.m. Kevin texted and says he isn’t sure if we can make it in time to Happy Place. He said “Then we need to see if discount tire can get us in.”

10:15 a.m. Kevin texted “Did you wave? We just went by.” I texted “I need the bathroom so hurry up. HAHAHA” [RV Lock keypad on the HOWE’s door isn’t working so Kevin has to lock it with the key. Of course it is locked and he isn’t here.]

11:20 a.m. Kevin and PUG are back. I run to the bathroom while PUG changes the tire with the new value stem and puts the spare where the blown tire was. HA Progressive pays the guy $60.00 to change a tire. However, he drove clear to Abilene and back so he charges us $175.00. We feel that is fair. He could have left us on the side of the road.

11:56 a.m. Pull up to Happy Place and two guys come out to look at the axle. Kevin says they were very nice. They can’t tell if the axle is bent or not but said it isn’t broken. Good thing – it would take 6-8 weeks just to get the axle in! So thankful!!!

Drive to Discount Tire in the same town. Driving south on Hwy 277 and get off the wrong exit, not once, but twice! We blame it on confusing signs but maybe our brains were a little scrambled at this point. HA Walk in and there is a short line but we get a guy quickly. I sit down in the waiting room chair so I won’t be in the way. The sales guy brings out a tire he recommended to Kevin. Says he uses it all commercial vehicles. Another blessing- they have them in stock and can put them on right now! Get all new tires.

12:30 p.m. Kevin sees an Arby’s next door and asks if I want to go there. Yes. I can’t eat much so I just get a slider and a drink. Kevin gets a meal. We eat and walk back to the tire store. I go to the restroom and when I come out, the tires are done. Wow! So thankful. Kevin gets out the sawsall and gives me gloves to hold the twisted metal along the blow out. He cuts it off. Kevin calls our campground for this evening. I see it closes at 7 and we won’t make it. He tells the person and the person said it was fine to come in and was given site #31 instead of #41. 

New Tires On HOWE, Trim Cut Off, Abilene, TX 11/09/24

1:18 p.m. On the road again! Wahooo! 

5:56 p.m. At Pecos, TX, the sun is setting and we are facing directly in to it. In fact, I put on a hat to try to keep the brim low so the sun isn’t shining directly in my eyes. We see a picnic parking (quite a few of these along these freeways) and we pull off. Just to let the sun settled down and us to stretch.

7:05 p.m. Arrive at Wild West RV Park in Van Horn, TX. We are glad to see site #31 is a pull off from the side road. Kevin plans to not unhook HOWE and not to even try to set down the jacks. Then, could more stuff happened? Yep! The bedroom slide won’t go all the way out. Only a few inches. I see it seemed to shift and not be coming out even. He looks online about it. Then he tries, out  a little bit, wait 5 seconds, bring it in, do this so many times. Doesn’t work and I feel a big pop. I hope no one knocks on our door tonight and tells us to follow the rule of parking the truck to the side of the trailer. Thankfully, no one did. We went right to sleep.

Darn, what a day. 

Next Day-

4:30 a.m. Alarm.

5:01 a.m. Down the road at Loves Truck Stop. Worst one we have been to.

5:25 a.m. On the road.

Time zone change 4:30 a.m.- woke up and now same time. LOL

Stop for basement door open. Close and lock again.

5:47 a.m. Stop for propane door open. Close and put duck tape on.

6:30 a.m. We drive through El Paso and was surprised to see how big it is. Where I-10 goes through it looked like nice shops and restaurants. The Wells Fargo building has the lights in the colors of a large flag. Past that we see the border of Mexico and US. We see the best billboard sign. It said, “Tex-Mex? How about New-Mex?” We thought that was awesome. It is promoting New Mexico. We didn’t catch if it is a restaurant or what but we sure like that.

As we pass through Las Cruces, NM, we see a lot of farms of pistachio trees. We stop for fuel at Love’s in Las Cruces. There is a line at the pumps so Kevin gets out and looks at the damage on HOWE. More of the siding is coming off. He gently puts his foot up to sort of kick it to see if it will bend back. A guy walks over and starts talking with him. I go inside the store but Kevin tells me later the guy has had the same thing happen to him. He feels bad for us.

2:30 p.m. So, Encore Golden Sun RV Resort in Apache Junction, AZ. We got an email the other day with our assigned site number E-14. It gave instructions to go to the site, “get comfortable” and then walk to the office for welcome packet. If it is a weekend, the office is closed so the packet will be on the outside wall and there will be posted the campground host and site if we need anything. There was also the phone number to this place. So we pull in and it is tight. I mean, narrow paved streets with tons of park models. There are RVs here also. We follow the map from the email and have turns that are tight and scary but we take it slow and Kevin does awesome. And then, site E-14 has a huge hold dug, dirt pile, saw horses with caution tape and an orange barrel right at the middle-back part of our site. It is very short, too, so no way can HOWE fit there at all. Kevin calls the phone number on the email and it goes to voice mail. I jump out of the truck and walked to the office. I get our packet but see nowhere listed a camp host. I go inside the building and on the bulletin board there isn’t a camp host listed, either. A couple are there. I say, “I am deaf and I am going to use this voice to text to read your words” and then ask them if they know where the camp host is. They say they just got here yesterday and didn’t know. I double check the board and the wall and nothing. In the packet is info about if there is a maintenance emergency, call Jim at this number. I text a picture of it to Kevin to call. As I walk I see people sitting outside their park model.  I ask them where the camp host is. They say there isn’t a camp host and hasn’t been one all year. What?! What to do. Thank them for their time and walk to Kevin and HOWE parked along the broken site. Meanwhile, he had talked with people across the road and they were very nice, he says. They say to pick another site, since we are here just until Saturday. Great. Kevin walks down E Street a bit and finds a few that are longer. We get backed in. 

Remember the rear jack that had the wires literally blown away yesterday? HOWE has an automatic leveling system. We hope we can manually level it because we have been able to do that in that past. Well, no go. It immediately alerted that the RR jack was erroring out and no way to override it. Off to O’Reilly Auto Parts store, nearby, for wire stuff. Before we leave, Kevin looks underneath where the tire blew out the wiring and thankfully, there is enough wires left and he just needs to the do connections. I think! HAHA He works and gets the wiring fixed. Get hitched up and did the leveling process, unhooked, hold our breaths for gizilon minutes and “success” HOWE automatically levels perfectly. Whew! I have tears in my eyes with relief. 

Next problem: the bedroom slide. It still won’t go out, except for a few inches. We put it out as far as it would go, a few inches, but the mattress is up against the clothes drawer still. I say there is plenty of clothes on the washer to be washed and I can climb over the bed to reach our washer and the dryer. HAHA I can wash them and we can wear them since I can’t put them away. Funny! We fell asleep completely exhausted and spent.

A very tough two days but lots of thankfulness it wasn’t worse. As we say, we are safe and we have each other.

1. “HOWE” is what we named our Alliance Avenue 36-ft 5th wheel. See: Home On WhEels and we pronounce it Howie. We live and travel in it full-time around the country.