Current Location: Gulf State Park, Gulf Shores, Alabama

This morning, Val was out the door early to run over to church to work with the sound system. She picked up our son, David, on the way. They did their thing for a couple hours, then headed back to the campground. David dropped Val off and took her car on to the house while we are away.

In the meantime, Malcolm finished the close-up and hooking up the trailer to the truck. He drove over to the dump station and took his time really cleaning out the tanks well while he waited on Val. We hit the road around 11:00 AM towards Gulf Shores, Alabama. The GPS indicated about a 3 1/2 hour drive there.

Dumping the tanks.

Thirty minutes into our trip, as we are traveling down I-65 still in Montgomery, a delivery van pulled up beside us and started motioning towards our trailer as if something were wrong. Windows were rolled down and he yelled that we had a flat tire. We thanked him and pulled over to the shoulder when we could find a decent place. By the time we pulled over, we could see smoke rolling out from the right-hand side tires on the trailer.

Shredded tire.

Malcolm called up Good Sam Roadside Assistance, explained our predicament and where we were and was promised someone would be there to help us change the tire within about an hour. About an hour later a truck pulled up and started to work on jacking up the trailer. However, his jack wasn’t sufficient, so he called another truck that had an air operated jack and a compressor and, between the two of them, they got us all fixed up.

Using the air jack.

Tire off, trying to get the axle high enough to get the spare on.

Putting on the lug nuts and finishing up.

The Good Sam Roadside Assistance pretty much paid for itself on this event. There was no charge at all for the roadside response. Just buying a heavy enough jack and carting it around would have been a hassle. Hopefully, we won’t have to do this too often.

Malcolm called our tire store at home to see what type of tires they had or could get, but after finding they would have to order most anything we needed, we decided to roll on down to Gulf Shores and risk not having another flat (we didn’t). Once parked, we’ll be here a week, so we’ve got time to track down someone to put new tires on the trailer (we’re going to replace all the cheapo foreign tires on it except the spare – the particular brand has a bad track record of failed tires).

We arrived at Gulf State Park and checked in around 5:30 PM. After setting up, we walked over to meet some of the other Heartland folks that are already here for the rally later in the week. We chatted for an hour or so and everyone broke off to head back and fix their respective dinners. The guys are going to try to go golfing tomorrow and we’re all planning on checking out a seafood restaurant for lunch.