Not making it to El Paso

At the beginning of November we decided we’d better head off to Texas to get our annual safety inspections carried out in El Paso, we never actually made it. 

As we drove along I10 just west of Deming a loud sharp noise startled us, I honestly thought someone had shot at us.   We pulled over onto the hard shoulder and luckily for us a New Mexico State Trooper pulled in behind us.   One of the tyres on the fifth wheel had exploded and that was the noise we’d heard.

The Trooper escorted us of I10 to a safe place and made sure we’d be able to get help.   Thank you Mr New Mexico State Trooper, we really appreciated your help that day.

  

When we were able to look at the tyre properly it was beyond repair and bits of shredded black plastic were hanging beneath the large slide.

Thankfully we were able to get to the spare put on, drive to the RV Park on the other side of Deming and get set up before it got dark.

The next day the tyre company told us that they’d had no end of problems with this particular make of tyre and had stopped selling them.   After hearing this we felt uneasy about the rest of them, so we even though the tyres were less than 2½ years old and we’d driven less than 10,000 miles on them, if that, we decided we’d feel safer if we replaced them all, so we did.   

We returned to Tucson and were lucky in that we were able to get all the repair work done and completed before we came home at the end of November; we’d half expected that we’d have to wait until we returned this year. 

One of the many gorgeous sunsets we saw while we were staying in Tucson.

We really enjoyed our trips in 2017, despite having some unexpected and in some cases unwanted excitement, as for 2018 who knows where we’ll get to.

Have fun, we are!