On a Bad Streak

It was close to our scheduled departure time of 9 AM when we finally left Las Vegas. The trip up I-15 was a fairly easy drive and we even enjoyed the beautiful mountains through the section of I-15 in the far northwest corner of AZ:

Yes, that's the view of the rear of the fifth wheel that Josie enjoys while we travel.

It was going smoothly until we reached the town of Cedar City in Utah. That's when it happened - again! Boom! Another tire exploded and I caught the tread flying everywhere in my side view mirror. This time it was the rear tire on the opposite side from the first one:

Here we are now, without a spare. We once again called AAA and they promptly sent out a truck. Unfortunately, there were no matching tires anywhere in Cedar City after calling all the tire stores in town. We found a close match at one of the stores, so we drove the Jeep to the store, while the AAA mechanic stayed in his truck, and we purchased a tire to put on the wheel of the blown tire from Saturday. We returned to the site on I-15 where the rig was sitting, and the mechanic did the replacement:

It's just a good thing that the tire was on the curb side as this area on the freeway was under construction and there was no room on the highway side as a result of construction barrels and heavy traffic.

It is now a mystery why all of a sudden our tires are starting to go. Forget the theory that the first one was a result of weakened tread as a result of the previous repair. There was nothing wrong with the tire that blew yesterday. The only thing we can figure is that the tires are 4 1/2 years old and are beginning to break down from age. That means we have to replace the other tires before they also blow. We have a place identified just outside of Salt Lake that we are planning to stop on the way to Logan, UT today, which is our final destination. We hope we can get the tire situation corrected as this is not fun. It also is not cheap!

We have a fairly decent site here at Camperland in Beaver, UT:

but we are not planning to stay long enough to enjoy the campground or anything else. We are preoccupied with the tire problems and hope we can find a place - somewhere, anywhere - that carries RV tires. It is unbelievable that even the RV dealers don't carry these kind of tires. The damage to our rig from these blowouts is yet another story and we don't look forward to having those problems fixed down the road. As mentioned yesterday, our problem free travel days over the last 4 years have come come to a screeching halt. We're thankful that we are OK and that we don't schedule long distances to travel each day...