Ya know those ads for RVs...

 

The ones with smiling people and everyone sitting around a campfire making Smores?  Yeah, don't believe it.

We didn't get too far today: left Goodyear around 8:30 in the morning, made it to just south of Phoenix, and... BLAM!  A blow out!  Not really that close to civilization.  I got the coach to the side of the road - no real safe place to pull off.  We limped very slowly 1 3/4 miles to an exit.  Fortunately, there was a sizeable gravel area on that exit ramp where we could pull off, away from traffic going 80 mph and call for road service.  We have that with our insurance.  You call them, they find the nearest company that can come to you and change your tire... assuming you have a spare.  We do, but that isn't the case with a lot of motorhomes.  That's the good news.  The bad news: that spare is buried on the back wall of our "gear storage" compartment.  But, the good news: when I finally got through to a real person at Progressive, they found someone who was reasonably close to us.  When he called to say he was on the way, he was less than 20 minutes away.

These road service people (in our experience) don't sell tires - they come out to change a tire, give you a jump start, replace a battery, bring you gas (if you've run out), and do a lock-out service.  Johnathon was our big ol' knight in shining armor.  After Joan and I emptied out that gear storage compartment, Johnathon climbed into it and hefted out that heavy spare tire on his own.  And then went to work changing it out...

 That tire above was not original with the motorhome.  You can see that the tread separated and the belts blew through the tire carcass.  It did do a bit of damage to the inner fender well, but I think I will be able to patch that; nothing that you can see unless you crawl under there.  I didn't see any busted electrical or water lines.  We'll know more after we get a chance to try all that out.

While Johnathon was changing the tire (we helped by raising that side of the coach with our leveling jacks), I got on the phone to the nearest Discount Tire - they are my go-to place for tires.  Only 7.5 miles away.  Visiting with them, they didn't have the Michelin tires I wanted... it looked like I was going to have to settle for a lesser tire.  When we got there, the lady I spoke with on the phone checked around and said there was another Discount Tire about 15 miles away (wrong direction, of course) that had the Michelin tires in stock... "Do you want to go there and I'll have them set up an appointment for you?"

"Absolutely."

We drove north and east to get to that Discount Tire.  The guys there were just as accommodating as the lady at the first one.  They had one other job in front of ours, then they went to work on it.  I had them change out all 4 rear dual tires.  After blowing the one and having to drive slowly to a safe place to pull off, I knew I had put undue stress on the outer duel tire (it was the inner duel tire that blew)... best to just change them all for safety sake.

They worked on it outside, since we were too big for their bays.  It took about an hour and a half to get the work done, tires mounted, and another good guy at DT who climbed into our gear storage compartment to mount that spare tire on the back wall.  Of course, that meant that Joan and I unloaded then reloaded everything in that compartment again.

On the bright side, even though all this took most of the day, we are not on a schedule.  Yes, we have our head into getting home, but we stopped for the night in a nice park (we've stayed here before) in Tucson.  They have long sites, paved patios, plenty of width, and they put us in a pull through that has overhead panels so we aren't getting pounded by the sun.  I was wiped and just wanted to be down for the day... looking at this site, I said to Joan, "How about we stay here another night and have a relaxing day tomorrow?"  She was all in.  Rufus was all in, too - I think he could sense our stress: he rode on my lap the last 50 miles or so; I think it was soothing for both of us.

The traffic flowed decent until the last 3 miles before our turn off of I-10, and then it was stop and go, bumper to bumper.  It took another half hour to go those 3 miles.

The site we're in...

You can see the overhead panels in the upper center of that photo above.

We went to the BBQ restaurant here in the park and took it back to the coach.  After which, I took Rufus for a walk.  He likes this park way better than where we've been the last 7 weeks.  He walked like a champ until two ladies came out of their motorhomes (the couples are traveling together) and absolutely gushed over Rufus.  They both have cats, both have tried to get them to walk on a leash, without success.  I think Rufus was showing off a bit for them.

Then, back to the motorhome where the last rays of the day were back-lighting his fur as he looked out the door...

It was a somewhat stressful day all around, but Ruf handled it just fine... because, he's a good boy.  :-)

It was a hot one today.  I saw 98º on the outside air temp in the motorhome, Joan said she saw 100º on the Equinox.  We were able to run the generator and air conditioning while we waited for road service to get to us, and also in the two Discount Tire parking lots while we waited, and while they worked on it.  It would have been unbearable without that.