We’re Home!
Well, after a rather restful week camping on the beach in Corpus Christi, we started our trek home last week. We spent the first night (Monday the 17th) in Kemah, TX, which is right on the water, just South of Houston, visiting relatives. Pretty uneventful.
The action started on Tuesday, as we made our way North. We got as far as Benton, Arkansas, when yet another tire blew - the same one that blew the first time around. Fortunately, we have dualies in the back (two tires per side). So we can still drive when one is blown, but we just can’t drive far or fast.
It was too late in the day to get someone out to fix it. But luckily we were close to an RV park and just hunkered down there for the night.
In the morning, we called the local tire place and out came Jerry, a Boomhauer clone, to fix it.
Jerry discovered that when the tire was replaced before, they put on one that was a size too small. This put extra pressure on the one good tire on that side, causing it to blow. The blowout was only a matter of time, apparently.
That discovery forced us to drop $500 on two new tires - one to replace the blown one and one to replace the undersized one.
You’d think our troubles would be over after that. You’d be wrong.
We hop back on the highway and get about 80 miles outside of Benton, when the RV starts shaking violently anytime we try to go over 60 MPH. We find another tire place. They rotate the two new tires to the front and we go on our way again. Except now the just front of the RV shakes when we try to go over 60 MPH. Definitely a problem with the new tires.
We drive back to the tire place and they suggest we go back to Benton and get Jerry to replace the tires with two different ones. So we backtrack 80 miles and get Jerry to replace the tires.
By this time, it is about 4:30 PM and we’v made absolutely no progress because we are once again back in Benton - where we started that morning.
We decide screw it - let’s just focus on getting home. We decided to drive until we were too tired and then find a truckstop where we could sleep it off. So that is what we did.
The point at which we were too tired to drive anymore came at 5:30 AM EST in Wythville, VA. We pulled off at a Truckstops of America and, after much difficulty, found a spot to park out in front. We shut everything down and crawled into bed.
It actually worked out really well. We were in a well-lit area and nobody bothered us. The only bad part was the WiFi sucked. There was no signal in the front of the building.
We got back on the road about 10:30 AM and drove all day until we reached Appalachian Campsites in Shartlesville, PA. We had a great Pennsylvania Dutch dinner, a shower, and a good night’s sleep.
Friday we got up early and headed for Bangor. Made it home about 8:30 PM that night and spend the weekend decompressing.