Though I had the alarm set for 6:50, I actually woke up just after 6, so I got up and started getting ready to leave. I checked the radar and the rain was coming in earlier than we thought, so Hubby got up early, too, and we packed up and were on the road by 7:45, stopping to dump at the exit to the campground, and relieved no one was there ahead of us. I was worried that with literally hundreds of RVs in the campground there would be a line at the dump, but we were first, thank goodness! We headed out, once again stopping at the Wendys at the Pilot in Dickson to pick up breakfast, but just as I was pulling out of the truck stop into the driveway of a motel next door, which was the easiest way back on the road, my truck suddenly quit. It behaved like it was out of fuel (I had ¾ of a tank), and I couldn’t get it started again. The only thing we could think of was that it was the fuel filter, so Hubby ran up the road to O’Reilly’s, who happened to be open already (yeah) and had the part we needed, and was back pretty quick. We struggled through the process of replacing the filter, keeping our fingers crossed that that was the one and only problem, and sure enough, after some good cranking for about 30 seconds, the truck started up. We were back on the road again by 10:30, having lost nearly 2 hours, and the rain lurking nearer, in fact there were showers all around us. We made one more stop at a Tractor Supply off I-840, running into occasional showers along the way. I stopped under an underpass in order to keep my hay from getting soaked once, and started to do that again under another one, but for some reason it was actually more narrow under the underpass than on the road, and it was way too dangerous to stay there, so I pulled back out when I could. Unfortunately, when Hubby pulled out to follow me, he just clipped the wheel well of the horse trailer on the guardrail, and just bent the aluminum enough to turn it into the tire, which was just enough to brush against the tire, taking a chunk out of the sidewall and making it go flat. We had only traveled a short way from the underpass when we stopped to check on it, and sure enough, flat as a pancake. I threw the tarp over the hay to keep it from getting any wetter (it was still raining, but starting to taper off), and proceeded to get the trailer up on the Jiffy Jack, get out the brand new spare we had just bought last month and get the tire changed. We were back on the road again in about 15 or 20 minutes, having changed the tire and pulled out the wheel well so it wouldn’t scrape the new tire. From there, we were only about 45 minutes from home, the rain had stopped along our route (though more was coming in soon) and we finally made it home around 1:30, many hours past our scheduled arrival, but home, safe and sound, nevertheless. We covered the hay, put the horses out in the pasture, brought in the essentials we needed from the RV, took a shower and crashed for the rest of the day, exhausted from all the calamities we had encountered. As I had mentioned in my clinic on Friday, you need a Plan A, a Plan B, and sometimes even a Plan C, and even then, there are times when you just have to wing it. Still not sure why the fuel filter went bad, it had been changed in July last year, and we had only put 9000 miles on it, supposed to be good for 15K. So now we need a new wheel (the rim has been irreparably bent) before we can go on another trip, and Hubby thinks something else is wrong, as the wheel doesn’t seem to be running straight. Something else for him to look forward to doing after he gets his heart back in rhythm! Crashed the rest of the day and evening, to bed early!
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