Leaving Show Low we were headed to Alamogordo, NM for a few days sightseeing and well it would put us back by the mountains (noticing a trend here yet lol). However, as we were leaving Show Low – about an hour and a half into our drive – the truck signaled that the trailer brake was disconnected. We were a bit confused so we pulled over immediately – as soon as Michael opened the driver door I could smell the smoke and immediately felt my anxiety try to start climbing. If you are newer to this blog you may not know that June of 2021 we were heading to Louisiana when we were flagged down on the highway – pulled over to smoke billowing out of one our driver side tire areas. We had a bearing that was catching fire – that incident led to our first ever hotel stay together and a stressful night for sure.
Our tire pressure monitor system (tpms) hadn’t caught it yet as it was just heating up although it caught up after a minute. After a call to our roadside assistance company we knew this was going to be a rough time – we were 12 miles outside a very, VERY small town and 70 miles from any major towns for repairs. Roadside assistance had no one nearby to get to us (not a surprise considering where we were) however they could try to get a truck to take the trailer to the town 12 miles away – we did not have confidence in breeching the language barrier we were dealing with that they understood someone would have to actually put the trailer on a flatbed trailer to haul it. We decided to make a bold choice and limped our way – 5 mph for 12 miles which took us about 2 hours to get to Quemado where roadside had spoken with a shop that would actually be able to fix it. It was a scary drive and we watched the tire temps the entire time to be sure we weren’t overheating to the point of making things worse than they were.
When we got to the shop it became obvious we weren’t making any progress to Alamogordo that night. The young man working to get the bearing off that was melted to the axle was trying but it was not an easy job. One of the biggest blessings we had was that there was a small motel across the road from the shop. I went over and reserved us a night there so they could work on finishing the repair on Saturday. Our RV isn’t equipped yet for solar and with the gas station traffic at the shop as well we figured it would be easier to do the hotel stay with the dogs around. We were hoping it would be a one day fix but Saturday proved to be very frustrating.
The nice hotel manager had told us we could check out a bit later in the hopes that our repair would be fixed mid-day. We checked out around 1 in the afternoon and waited in the truck for hours and hours. Being a small town no one was in a great hurry it seemed – they all were very laid back and while we were anxious and had plans to be elsewhere that wasn’t their worry. By about 7:30 in the evening on Saturday it became very obvious that we were not leaving and we reserved another night in the small motel. By this point we were frustrated, tired, irritated (turns out one of the guys working on a part decided to spend several hours that afternoon otherwise occupied while having promised he’d have us on the road that night).
As we had reservations at the KOA in Alamogordo we contacted them when we knew we wouldn’t make the first night’s stay there and on Saturday when we thought we were going to be back on the road let them know we’d probably get in late but we’d be there. Sunday morning as we were getting word that the repairs were done the KOA manager called to make sure we were okay and safe as she noticed we hadn’t arrived the night before as we thought we would. We were very touched by her checking on us and appreciated the concern – let her know we’d just gotten word we were repaired and would see them later that day. The rest of the drive to Alamogordo was uneventful and filled with gratitude that we were back on our way to our destination.
GnomadicLife 