Wild West '06

Trouble on the Road: Little Rock, AK--Hinton, OK

After a lovely start to the day we were on the road by 10:00 a.m. We had even given the kids a good 30 minutes of playground time. We were set to get to Hinton's Red Rock Canyon State Park and enjoy the place by daylight. After all, it was a relatively short drive planned. However, after about an hour of driving, we began to feel some vibration in the vehicle which seemed to be coming from the camper. Eric pulled over on the side of the interstate to check and found that a camper tire had shredded. It still had air, but pieces flying off of it had damaged the camper fenders surrounding the wheel. It looked as if the old tire had been a re-tread from the way it came off, but that was not the case.

There was a sign right in front of us that said "Scenic overlook 1 mile," so we decided that we would try to limp on the bad tire to the overlook in order to make the repair in a safer situation. With flashers going & driving slowly on the shoulder, we made it in to find a couple of truckers sleeping in their rigs. Eric got out the manual to see if it told where the jack/lug wrench were stored in the camper only to find the manual say "jack and lug wrench not included." So he got out the tools we had on board and started trying to loosen the nuts with a crescent wrench. He got three of the four lugs off using the crescent wrench, but one was very stubborn. The socket wrench set that we had did not have the right size either (13/16 inch). By this time a couple of cars had pulled in and people were out enjoying the view or just sitting in their cars. One group of three young men had pulled up. We decided to ask if they had any tools that might solve our problem. They started unpacking their trunk which had lots of fireworks and booze. They were from Connecticut and were on their way moving to San Francisco. Seems one of them had just bought the car, and were assured from the dealer that there was a lug wrench, but this was the first time he had checked, it didn't have a wrench at all, so they decided to shoot some of the fireworks. At least this entertained the kids who don't normally see fireworks at rest areas on interstates.

A couple of other people were willing to check, but no one had the right size. One trucker of middle eastern origin was up on the hill talking on his cell phone, and I decided to approach him. While he talked on the phone he made about three trips back and forth to his truck and really sweated a lot trying to help us. He & Eric finally got the spare on. My job was to keep an eye on Ward & John & hold the umbrella to keep the sun off them. After thanking the helpful trucker we gave him some of our homemade blueberry muffins and started on down the interstate with the intention of finding the nearest camper dealership or tire specialty business to get a new spare and replace the other tire. We were both puzzled and uneasy with the situation--puzzled because the tires on the camper were just over 1 year old and had less than 8000 miles on them, and uneasy because the tire on the other side was purchased at the same time. We finally found a tire store in Van Buren, AK, (the 6th place we tried) that was able to fit the tire. Eric recalled when he bought the original tires in Knoxville, it had a been a headache then too. Still don't have the lug wrench though, will take care of that in C. Springs, hopefully.

We rolled into Red Rock Canyon in Hinton, OK about 10:30 where we quickly set up and went straight to bed. As we were setting up, armadillos were running around all over the place. The kids tried with flashlights to catch sight of the armadillos as they occasionally poked out of the brush around the campsite. Unfortunately for Sam, we did not get a picture of one so she could be trained in armadillo recognition.

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