Monday, May 22, 2023 – Troublesome Travel Day to Hungerford Horse Camp, MI

Hey Babe!
Up with the alarm, packed up and ready to leave by just after 8:00, with a little help from Mike who generously offered to do my site cleanup, which saved me a good ten minutes. Took a wrong turn out of camp, though, and ended up in a parking lot where I had to turn around. Didn’t think much of it at the time, but I think I over-torqued one of the tires in the process, because just north of Ft. Wayne, I had a major blowout. I heard it go just as I was approaching an exit, so I pulled off and stopped asap, because I knew the weight was too much for a single tire, and I didn’t want to blow a second one! I tried to loosen the lug nuts, but it was too tight and the tire was so shredded that it would spin around when I put force on it, so I called Progressive and they got me road service within half an hour. Meanwhile, I took out the spare and lined up the Jiffy Jack, so we were able to make short work of it once he got there. Of course, the spare only had about 70 psi in it because it’s such a tight fit on the rack, but he pulled out a little Milwaukee inflator that actually got it almost all the way up to 125 before the battery ran out. I had one other tire that was a little low, I was hoping to get that filled, but there was a Pilot at that exit, so after we finished the job (no charge to me, yay Progressive!), I pulled into Pilot looking for air, couldn’t find it, but managed to sweet talk a passing Goodyear tire repair truck into topping it off for me. I got the impression he just hangs around at the truck stop to pick up work there, it was VERY busy there! Anyway, I was on the road again with only about an hour delay, and the rest of the trip was uneventful. Unfortunately, when the tire blew, it took out a big chunk of the wheel well, which also serves as the bottom of my storage compartments, so I’m going to have to find a welder or repairman to fix it. It also blew out the wiring that works the trailer brakes, so they didn’t work either! I’m hoping I can fix that myself. After paying $1100 to get them fixed a few weeks ago, I’m ticked that I had to drive all day with no brakes! Fortunately, it was pretty flat driving all the way, and I only had one “bucking” problem when there was a sudden traffic jam at some construction near Grand Rapids. Arrived safely at Hungerford, was a bit surprised at how many sites were taken on a Monday! And unfortunately the site I was planning on taking, which is the easiest for me to get into, was closed for “safety” reasons, so I had to find another one. Tried one, couldn’t make it, but did finally find one I could get into easy enough. The challenge is all the trees that are close to the road, my rig just doesn’t have enough room to avoid them, so I need to find one with lots of open space on both sides of the road. Anyway, I got the highlines up, though I let the horses graze for awhile, there was some nice fresh grass scattered around. Got set up, went down and got some water in the truck tank and got the horses water filled up. Heated up leftovers for dinner, put the horses to bed (naturally, they wanted to keep grazing. They really don’t like the hay I got for them in TN), and settled down for the evening, with a long list of things to do tomorrow, none of which include riding, but they probably need to rest anyway, after so many hours of bumpy roads. Good night, sweetie! Love you!

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