KEEPIN' BETWEEN THE WHITE LINES!

Saturday July 26, 2013 

THE BIG BANG!

We left Asheville NC around 9:30 AM and the trip through the NC and Tennessee mountains was superb.  Usually I pick up a book and start to read, but not this leg of the trip.  Mountain range after mountain range brought beautiful vistas. 

Dave changed the fuel filter in Asheville and the MH was behaving well for the first part of the trip, but after about 50 miles it started wheezing and sputtering again.  This is when you realize just how many mountain passes you drive through between Asheville and Kentucky! 

I started to doze a little bit as we entered Kentucky but that was short lived! Around 2:40 PM we heard a POW from the front left tire.  Now I was awake!  I had a pillow in my lap and clutched it to my chest, scrunched down in the seat and braced myself for the inevitable crash that I was sure to come.  Dave, gripping the wheel, handled the MH as it veered to the left where I was sure we’d end up in the center grass median which was fortunately very, very wide although down a gully.  Then as he was slowing the MH down, he brought it back over to the right so we could get off the road.  It was God’s miracle that there were no cars on either side of us and everyone behind us had noticed what was happening and slowed down.  We came to a stop at the side of I-75 just south of the Corbin KY exit, 90 miles from Lexington and the traffic picked up speed as it streamed by us. 

Note:  In our RV driving class, the instructor talked about blow outs and accelerating the MH will keep it on track.  Well…..Dave tried that but it didn’t work! 

Anyway, sitting alongside of I-75 with the semi’s flying by, the MH was rockin and rollin!  Dave called Good Sam, was on hold for about 20 minutes, then was told  it would be 70 minutes before we could get help.  In the meantime two Sherriff’s cars came across the median.  They had to sit for about five minutes before they could cross the traffic and get over to us.  Someone had called in that they thought we had been hit so they were responding to a possible accident.  Perhaps someone heard the bang of the tire.  For about five blissful minutes, while they talked with Dave, the traffic slowed and moved over as they passed us.  But……as soon as the police cars with those LOVELY blue lights left, the traffic barreled on by us!

Finally the Good Sam technician arrived.  A young kid!  I thought he was way too young to be put in the kind of danger of changing tires on the side of a busy interstate!  So, now I worried about Dave and “the kid” as Dave tried to flag the traffic to slow down while “the kid” knelt on the highway with his butt on the white line looking at the tire.  It was completely torn up!

We put our front jacks down to lift up the body and “the kid” put our spare on.  By 5:00 we were on our way to Lexington.  Plan to buy new “shoes” in Ohio!  These tires had 9,000 miles on them.  Maybe it’s different for motor homes??

The  Kentucky Horse Park State Park  was packed.  There are at least as many horse trailers/5^th wheel combination campers here as other types of RV’s and tents. 

I love this park.  It borders the Kentucky Horse Park and is very expansive with lots of green space for Billy to run around.  Saturday is Hats Off Day celebrating the horse industry and its impact on the State. There is free admission to the park and Saturday night is the $50,000 Rood & Riddle Kentucky Grand Prix, a show jumping competition between top international horses and riders.