Summer 2010
Pacific Northwest

This was supposed to be a relatively easy day... It wasn't. The first 300 miles involved driving in periods of drizzle, light rain and fog. As we were rolling along, I thought about what I was going to write.

The fates struck in Menomonie, WI. We pulled into a rest area for lunch and it has been my practice when making the mid-day stop to check the trailer for problems. I look at the undercarriage, the suspension system and the tires. As I felt around the tires, I got a splinter and I knew I had a problem. When I looked at the tire more closely, I could see the steel core showing... not a good thing. I could also see that both wheels on the rear axle were out of alignment. The other tire was not wearing as badly, but it was wearing. After a number of calls to the manufacturer's road service number, we concluded that it would probably take several weeks to get the parts and that the nearest dealer to us could not handle the job. We got the tire replaced and drove another 100+ miles to Clearwater, MN. Once we got here, Susie and I decided that to continue on this trip and have the trailer repaired when we got home was not a realistic option. We decided to cancel the trip but still go to the wedding in Vancouver, leaving the trailer in the Clearwater RV Park.

As I write this, we have reservations in the wedding hotel in Vancouver and reservations for stops on the route up. We will stay at this campground an extra day and head out to Vancouver on Sunday and arrive there on Thursday morning. We should be back here on the following Thursday and home by June 7th.

I really wanted to make this trip because I always wanted to go to Yellowstone and Olympic National Parks. I'm confident that we will do in the near future. As we cancelled the reservation in Yellowstone, where we should have been on Sunday, we learned that it was snowing... that might have been very interesting! I have a feeling that we will see snow in some of the high passes on I-90.

We probably will not continue posting updates on the Web site for the remainder of this trip. However you never know what may happen over the next couple of weeks. If something comes up, the home page will identify the date of the most recent update. In the meantime, Susie and I are discussing a different kind of adventure for later in the summer that may not include the trailer.