Saturday, August 4, 2012

Tire Trouble on the Way to Las Vegas


The highway between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas is not that exciting.  This is an area of high mountain desert, scrub brush, cactus, rolling hills, and mountains.  Temperatures can get very high; we have seen 42 degrees on our truck’s temperature gauge.  This makes for very hot road surfaces, lots of flat tires, and debris on the road.  Whether from the heat, debris, or just fate, we blew a tire on the trailer about 50 km north of Vegas.  After our previous tire blow out experiences, David was prepared for this!!  When we blew our first tire in Virginia, we called CAA to help us out.  Now we rolled into action as a team!!

 Luckily, we were very close to a highway exit so we were a little safer than the side of the Interstate.  Unluckily, we were dealing with 41 degree heat in the desert at the side of a road.  We raised the trailer up using the same blocks we use for levelling in campgrounds, mind you, I’ve never had to raise it up quite so high!  Sean provided the muscle to get the lug nuts off while David got the spare.  Rianna was the official videographer and water supplier.  We were only working for about half an hour, but I must admit that by the time I was done my part I was feeling light headed and nauseous.  The state trooper came by, just to make sure we were ok, so that was reassuring.

We were all very hot by the time we were done, and a little nervous for the rest of the drive into Vegas.  The tire had shredded quite badly, so we were a little worried about damage to the other tires or the undercarriage on the trailer. We managed to get into town, with no further problems, but it was a big relief to unhitch and walk into the hotel!!  We were VERY glad that we had decided to stay in the hotel part of Circus Circus, and not the campground!!  It also happened to be 5 minutes away from the tire dealership where we had to take it to get a brand new set of 5 tires!!

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