We made all our preparations to move on this morning, planning to go into Jackson to get fuel and propane and groceries and mouse traps and then go on to Farson, WY tonight. After our walk, we started out of the campsite when we heard a loud rubbing sound coming from the wheels. It sounded like a major brake problem. We called Ken Ullmer, service manager at New Horizons.
He said that he needed to know more about the issue, so he told us to find a level spot and raise the trailer wheels off the ground. Then we could spin each wheel and figure out where the problem was. We drove to the amphitheater and lifted the trailer on its leveling legs (Bigfoot).
We found two wheels that had serious problems. The passenger rear wheel was nearly frozen in place, and the one in front of it could be spun, but made loud scraping noises. We called Ken Ullmer back. He asked us to get down and look at the brakes, which we attempted to do. Unfortunately we didn’t really know what we were looking for, so we mainly got greasy and scraped up. Ullmer asked us to remove the wheels so we could look at the brakes. I didn’t think we could do that. We said that we’d find someone to come out and look at the problem and then call him back.
All of these conversations were on our cell phones. The Verizon service in the park is weak and spotty at best, so we couldn’t understand half of what we were saying to each other, and the calls were dropped a few times too. So I walked up to the office to see if they could recommend anyone in Jackson. They didn’t actually have any suggestions, one person got out the yellow pages looking for tire stores.
Meanwhile, Ken had managed to find and call two tire stores. As the office had thought, neither one would come out to the campground. However, one of them did give us a couple of referrals. The office staff graciously invited me to use their landline to make some calls. After several calls and waiting for callbacks, we found Troy’s Diesel in Jackson. They sent out Tyler.
Tyler set to work immediately removing the wheels and discovered that the inner caliper on one wheel and the outer caliper on the other had failed. The rear tire had no brake pad at all. It had been ground down to the bare metal. Both rotors needed replacement. Tyler called Ullmer and described the situation. Ullmer suggested that we should tow the trailer into Jackson, but Tyler said he wouldn’t feel safe towing with no trailer brakes.
The bottom line is that Tyler put the wheels back on so that we could move the trailer into a campsite (without hooking up the brakes). We were able to return to site #88 (after picking up some more fresh water) and paid for two more nights. Ullmer said that he would get the parts and have them shipped to Troy’s Diesel UPS overnight, so that we could expect them to arrive on Wednesday. Then Tyler would come back out and repair the brakes on site.
Meanwhile, we still had our mouse problem to deal with, so we decided to go to Jackson. We got two kinds of mousetraps and some mouse poison packets.
On the way back to camp, we noticed a really unusual cloud formations north of us. It looked like a cumulus cloud, but it seems to be much thicker than usual. Ken said it looked like the aftermath of an explosion of some kind, a fluffy mushroom cloud. Below that was a wispier, darker layer, which we thought might be smoke from the western forest fires.
When we got home, we put out the mousetraps first. We got two of the kind that are plastic and much easier to deal with than the standard mousetrap. Those we baited with peanut butter. Within a minute after the traps were put out, we heard one snap. Mouse One down. We had seen two mice, and of course we suspected there were more. We put out two sticky traps and some of the bait packets. To protect our food from hungry mice, I put some in the fridge and some in plastic containers to at least discourage the little critters.
While we were in town, we ate supper at Subway. We added a salad to our usual sandwiches and chips. The salad turned out to be a combination of the veggies available for sandwich toppings, and when the server asked what I wanted in the salad, I made the mistake of saying to put in everything except cucumbers and black olives (which Ken doesn’t like). The salad was heavy on dill pickles and banana peppers. The only dressings were those available for sandwiches. Fortunately, they did have ranch.
We spent some time checking out possible routes and stopping points, revised because of the delay. It’s difficult to tell how many days we will have for the trip to Junction City, which is over 1,000 miles from here.
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