Eventful Trip to Vegas

We were anxious to hit the road again so we got started around 8:30 yesterday. The trip went fine - traveling through Riverside and on past Victorville on I-15. Suddenly, about 15 miles south of Barstow on I-15, I heard a loud "pop", almost like an explosion, and sure enough, a tire blew. In 4 years of traveling we have never had a problem on the road before this, so I guess we were due. The tire that blew was the same tire that went flat in Happy Trails in AZ in January while we were there during our training class for Holiday Retirement. The tread must have been weakened by that repair back then and the whole tire just gave out:

There was some damage done by the tread as it fell off the tire. The trim piece on the wheel well was broken and there are dents and tread marks on the whole rear of the lower panel on the fifth wheel. There was also a trace of hydraulic fluid, as you can see, where the tread hit the landing gear and caused a small leak in the line. It could have been worse.

The problems we had with the Good Sam Road Service back in January for the repair of this tire resulted in our switching to AAA service. We always had AAA but when we hit the road they didn't offer RV coverage and they have since added it. We were glad we made the change back to AAA. They sent out a great mechanic and within a half hour in this remote location on the desert highway. He Maneuvered the spare out from under the coach chassis and had the spare tire on in no time:

Actually, it took a while to get the spare out from underneath the fifth wheel as it seemed that it had to be released from inside the rig. We moved our sofa out from the rear wall and started to take up the carpet to get to a release point and discovered that there was plywood on the floor that would cover any spare tire access. We stopped that effort, placed the sofa back in its place and the mechanic cut away the holding clamp to release the spare - after I signed a waiver of damages to the spare tire holding device. It amazed all of us that there weren't any instructions in all of the fifth wheel documentation about releasing the spare tire. Oh, well.

We were on our way again after a delay of about 1 1/2 hours - not too bad from start to finish. It was good fortune that this happened on a wide stretch of the highway and there was plenty of room to perform the work.

Our delay cost us some valuable exploring time as we arrived at our site at 3:30 PM in Vegas. It is a great campground, just off Exit 33 of I-15 which makes for an easy-off and easy-on for our trip. We decided to stay an extra night here and just enjoy the Resort. Also, I researched a replacement tire for our spare and the best deal is at the local Walmart, just down the road. I will have that task completed this morning.

Our site is great:

and the extra day will be welcomed...