Monday, June 3rd-A Blowout!

There are a number of definitions of blowout so I’d better be more specific! The type of blowout we had today was the kind where you’re 1) driving down the road, 2) hear a loud sudden noise, and 3) your vehicle starts wobbling and shaking. We were going North on I-15 near Dillon, MT. THREE things happened at once: First, Diana heard something and said “What’s that?” (I didn’t hear anything because I couldn’t hear a “dump truck driving through a nitroglycerin factory-even with my hearing aids turned up all the way!) Second, the trailer’s tire pressure monitoring system alarm started screaming BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!” and on and on. Third, the trailer’s weight shifted slightly to one side.
We were going uphill about 60 mph but I still wet my pants and sucked my thumb until I could get us to the side of the road! The tire was shredded and the tread was separated from the body of the tire. Here’s a pic of it:
We put the spare on the trailer (after we used the compressor to raise the psi from 35 to 70!) and drove slowly to Butte. Fortunately Les Schwab has tire stores in Montana and we remembered that from our Portland days. I first thought of just replacing the one blown tire but a more careful examination showed 2 of the other tires had little pieces of wire peeking out from under the tread! So that meant FOUR new tires on the trailer!
After that four hour fiasco, we drove to an RV park in Garrison, MT just off I-90. Tomorrow we’re headed up near Glacier National Park. A couple of days there and we’re headed North again to Alberta FINALLY! Here’s a pic of us at Riverfront RV Park:

Comments

  1. Chelsea HeathJune 4, 2019 at 10:39 AM

    Whoa! Glad you're safe!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Debra GouldJune 5, 2019 at 11:35 AM

    This is my blog comment from Tuesday (Ignore my misnomer in Glacier NP)
    I am trying this again! So glad all three (can’t forget Soo!) are ok! No more scared like that please!
    Now the trip: sounds like so much fun. We have not been to Mt Glacier Park so I am jealous. Hope you have your passports.
    Going to copy and paste this in case I fail to post again.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Saturday, October 26-Good News and Bad News About Lake Tahoe!

Image
We got to Lake Tahoe about dark-30 on Friday night. We drove through Truckee (on the CA side) down to the lake and then around the Nevada side to Zephyr Cove RV Park. We’re about four miles North of Stateline. First the good news: Lake Tahoe is a gift! The water is almost as blue as the water in Crater Lake but LT is much bigger. The lake is roughly rectangular with the dimensions being roughly ten by twenty miles. Everyone who has ever been here has a favorite part of the lake. The favorite part of LT for Diana and I has always been the area around Emerald Bay. Here are a couple of pics: Now for the bad news: I took a pretty nasty fall. I’m okay but here’s a quick summary: I have a broken right thumb and the orthopedic surgeon put a pin in it, with a couple of stitches, so it will heal correctly. My left knee has a hairline fracture so it’s immobilized with a flexbrace. Several stitches in my head and that pretty much does it. Look at the rocks at the bottom of the lower pic
Read more

Welcome to Mike and Diana Griffith's RV Life Blog!

Image
Welcome to our new blog! We invite you to follow us as we travel throughout the USA and Canada in our Durango fifth-wheel. We'll be sharing the highlights and pictures of our travels on this blog.  Rather than retiring in the usual sense, here is a short summary of our retirement plans:  We've already sold our home in Kingwood, TX.  We currently live in our RV in an RV Park North of Kingwood. This means we went from 2560 SF to 335 SF! Now THAT was a real challenge! We'll be updating this blog about the RV in the future.  We plan to leave here about the middle of May. We're going to the Dallas area to see our daughter and her family for a while. Then North to ALASKA! We will probably spend 3-4 weeks getting there because 1) we're retired and 2) we want to go to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and a few National Parks in Utah and Montana on the way. After exploring Alaska, we'll be headed back to Banff and Jasper National Parks in the Canadian Rockies. We
Read more

Tues, Dec 1, 2020-Petrified Forest National Park

Image
We expected to spend an hour or two at PFNP but we found it so unique we spent all day. We went there thinking there would see some hand sized pieces of petrified wood but were we wrong! We saw forests of petrified wood! Here’s a sample of some of the sizes of these trees now turned to crystal: The process of trees turning into rocks is a fascinating one. Several million years, when this area of NE Arizona was covered by a massive swamp, these giant trees fell into water. Over a few million more years, sediment covered the trees so they were preserved. Fast forward a few more million years and the atoms in the trees crystallized into petrified wood. The colors they crystallize into vary from red to orange to yellow to blue to gray to white to you name it. Here are a couple of pics of the colors of petrified trees: These two pics describes the large reddish polished sample above.  I set my wedding ring on this tree to give it some perspective Here’s a pic of my Bride with Dottie at the
Read more