On the Road Again--and Trouble

We headed out this morning on our way north to the Dallas area--our first real move after four months in the Rio Grande Valley. Everything seemed a bit unfamiliar after so long in one place. We played our theme song, Willie Nelson's On the Road Again. We stopped for lunch at a rest area and walked around a little bit. After we'd been on the road for another hour, we switched drivers at a "Parking Area" (in Texas, that's a rest area with no facilities).

Ken had been driving for only a little while when he suddenly said, "There's smoke coming from the back of the trailer." He pulled over along the highway and we got out to discover a completely ruined rear tire. We called Good Sam and they arranged for a tire service to come change our tire. The lucky thing about towing our home is that we then got to wait for the repair truck sitting at our kitchen table and playing Rummikub. We were 11 miles south of George West on US 281, and the nearest repair facility was in Beeville, over 20 miles away.

After an hour and a half, the friendly repair guy showed up and put on our spare. He even removed the damaged tire and put the rim in the pickup bed. We were lucky that the tire managed to blow toward the outside, so we have only a small amount of damage to the trailer, confined to the fender. On our trailer, the fender is a fairly small plastic piece, so it shouldn't be too difficult or expensive to replace.

We arrived at our campground in Three Rivers around 5:30 p.m. We're staying at Tips Park, where we stayed on our way south last November. It's a small place, not far off the highway--but right next to the Valero Three Rivers Refinery. When we close the door, it's not too loud...

Tomorrow we'll be looking for a new tire-or more probably, two, so we'll get up early and start calling tire stores.