In our quest to bag all 50 states, we decided to travel to
Mississippi and Alabama for our 16th wedding anniversary. It’s been almost 2 years since I’ve blogged
about a vacation, and nothing will compare to BKEA, but I figured bagging the
last two states in the CONUS was worth some blogging time.
Plus, this trip was going to be a little different…
Our trip was supposed to start on Wednesday, August 29th. We both left work a little early and rushed
home to finish packing the trailer and get the new toys loaded in the back of
the truck. We finally finished getting
everything ready to go and, after the realization that we needed to make a
quick trip to the pharmacy en route, we got on the road at 5pm. We left with some farewells from the
neighbors and headed to the pharmacy. I
jumped out and walked past the trailer…and stopped…and walked back…to tell
Bill that I smelled propane. He checked
the tanks while I picked up his RX. One of
the tanks was leaking at the connection so he shut it off and flipped over to
the other tank. Problem solved. We figured we’d just get a new tank and deal
with it when we get home. We got on 70
and took 340 to 81. Or would have had we
made it more than 14 miles before we smelled something burning and pulled over
to investigate. Bill jumped out while I
stayed with the Boys (all three – we have Lane with us for this trip) and when
he climbed back in the truck he informed me that one of the airbags exploded
and was melting onto the exhaust.
Joyous. He also said the tires
weren’t riding well and were extremely hot to the touch. Humpf. These were brand new tires that were put on just a few weeks ago. We went with a
different tire than we usually put on the truck. Lesson learned. Stick with what you know. The extra weight in the bed and the tongue
weight of the trailer puts us at max payload, but hey, it’s a truck, it’s
supposed to be used hard. What to do,
what to do? Returning home, we discussed
our options. We could not take the newly purchased XTs with us and haul the
trailer without issue, OR, we could upgrade to an LT tire to give us more
weight capacity. Naturally, this option
would cost us another thousand bucks, but
hey, we just bought two brand new 2013 dual purpose bikes specifically
for this trip. What’s another thousand
dollars? That’s what credit cards are
for. ;)
So, that was the start of our vacation…or the false start as
it turned out to be. We kept a positive attitude about it and pointed out that
we would have another night of sleeping comfortably in a king size bed. We’re
also both confident that all of these things happened for a reason and we’re
quite fine not knowing what that reason was.
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