Portland to Tucson Adventure

Little did I know when we had to change a tire on our travel trailer when we arrived in Portland that this was just the beginning. More about that in a minute.

We had a great time at the Northwest Quilting Expo.  This show always has beautiful quilts on display. These are just a few of my favorites.

We left Portland early Sunday morning. We needed to be in Tucson, AZ by Tuesday. My hope was to get there by early afternoon to do laundry and catch up on paperwork before we set up the show on Wednesday. But sometimes things just don't work out the way we plan.

For those who have never seen us driving down the highway, we have a large GMC truck with a big shell on it and we haul a 30' travel trailer. The truck holds our product and the trailer is our home away from home on the road. See an earlier post about how we pack everything in there and set up a show.

Our friend Holly from Quilter's Cove made the trip with us. She drives alone so when we are both heading to the same show, we often follow each other. It makes her feel a little safer and we are happy to have a buddy on the road.

The plan was to drive to Woodland, CA and leave there early Monday morning to miss the Sacramento traffic. However at about 3:00 Holly called to let us know that one of our wheels was smoking. So we pulled off the freeway and called AAA.

We were one mile from the small town of Maxwell and about 20 miles from the next "big" town of Williams. We were too big for the tow truck to tow us to Williams. Our wonderful tow truck driver Luis followed us off the freeway. We were going about 20 mph and the wheel started smoking by the time we made it off the freeway. The new plan was to drive to Williams on surface streets. We drove about another mile at 5 mph and we were smoking again. We found an empty lot and stopped there.

It was obvious we couldn't make it to Williams. Luis jacked up the tire and the wheel practically fell off. He put what was left of the wheel on blocks for us.

By now it was well after 5:00 on a Sunday so all of the garages and repair places were closed. Luis, made some calls and gave us some phone numbers to try on Monday for help.

We had to spend the night in that vacant lot.  Luis went to school with the people who own the lot and said that we would be fine there. Luis lives close to there and said he'd come check on us in the morning.

After many phone calls on Monday morning we finally found someone willing to come take a look. John from Mid Valley Auto Care in Williams came to our rescue. He went back to their shop and got the parts he needed to get us up and running again. Once he got us all fixed up we drove there to have them put a new tire on the spare we put on in Portland. We were back on the road at about 11:30. We still missed the Sacramento traffic, just about 6 hours later than planned.

We are so grateful that Holly was following us and to AAA for the outstanding service they provided us. If Holly hadn't called us to tell us the wheel was smoking, who knows what might have happened?

To be continued.... (unfoturnately)