STATS
Hours on Road: 10 - 10:15am; 11:30 - 12:45pm; 1:05 - 6:30pm
Miles Driven: 306
States in: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois
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We were on the road today for all of 5 minutes when Jeannie said:
What's this light on the dashboard?
The first thing I saw was the dummy computer telling us the liftgate was open (it wasn't totally opened, just not totally latched) so I had her pull over. I closed it and she indicated the light was still on. The one I saw wasn't the same one. Hers was a tire pressure gauge.
We are carrying almost 4,000 pounds, so we knew we'd need to watch the tire pressure. However, when we pulled off at the next exit to find that we couldn't maneuver into the area necessary to fill the tire with air at the gas station, I saw a tire place and she pulled into there. I'm glad we did.
We had a screw in the tire (I had the tech give it to me for putting in the scrapbook)and much more driving on it would've led to a blowout.
Over an hour later, we were back on the road and hit the first rainstorm of the trip.
We were humming along at the grand speed of about 35 mph when I noticed the lights weren't lit up on the trailer. Jeannie played with the switches, but they still didn't come on.
At the next exit, I hopped out into the pouring rain to look for a problem, but everything seemed fine. The actual brake lights did come on when Jeannie tapped the brakes, so as long as it was light out, we weren't in too much trouble. However, we didn't want to let a problem go, so when we saw a sign for a truck repair shop we decided to visit them.
Josh, one of the techs, was very nice. He found a cut in the grounding wire and taped it up, but it didn't fix the problem. He recommended that we call U-Haul and have them send someone out.
Having gone less than 100 miles and it being the afternoon already, we had lost a lot of time. We opted to not wait the hour plus it would take for U-Haul to get someone to us and get back on the road. Without back lights unless we hit the brakes we needed to be off the road before it started getting dark, so we decided to do our best to make it to St. Louis before nightfall.
And what was the dog doing during all of these delays? Sleeping, of course!
The rest of the afternoon passed without any more "events". Here's a few pix of the scenery from today:
Tired and unable to find a pet hotel in St. Louis, we decided to stay in Vandalia. We're at the Days Inn and the hotel attendant Tim has been amazingly helpful. He totally "gets" great customer service!
Jeannie dropped me off at the front lobby to check in and drove around the side of the hotel to find enough room to park. Unfortunately, the parking is in spaces around the hotel and it deadended.
Our plan to never back-up was shot. Jeannie and I worked for awhile to get the trailer and SUV backed up without success. We were covered in sweat (the humidity here is EVIL and it was 90 degrees), tired, hungry and yet we knew we couldn't give up. About that time, a guy pulled in and took pity on us. He not only backed it up, but got it facing forward so we can just drive out tomorrow night.
Here's how beautiful (haha) I looked after our days ordeals (actually I think this was just after the first two).
Oh, I almost forgot. U-Haul sent out Willy's Repair at around 8:30pm and they found that there may be a short in the trailer that caused the fuse to blow which is why it happened when it started raining hard. They replaced the fuse with one twice as strong and said it would probably hold. Let's hope...
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