We're not getting away that easily!

As frustrating as it is to incur damage on our RV, we woke up the next morning feeling grateful that things weren't worse. We were mere feet away from both our truck and trailer getting hit by trees in the same day. We were also only inches away from having worse damage on our trailer. The branch fell far enough back that the frame took most of the impact. Had it been even slightly further forward, it would have impaled more of the sheet metal, likely resulting in a hole that could have gone completely through our ceiling. And, most importantly, we were all safe, and from the looks of it, would be able to stay in our RV and continue our travels.

We began our breakdown process, getting all of our belongings into their respective places for a day of travel. Then we commenced with our leak test, making sure that our duct tape/roof sealant was a viable solution to keep water from getting into our roof. Anthony gave the area a good spray with the hose, and to our relief, no water came through! We were ready to roll.

First, though, we needed to stop at the dump station. 10 days without sewer when we had thought we'd have full hookups meant that we were running low on tank space. We ended up completely filling our gray tank as we packed up, and black wasn't too far behind. We pulled around to the dump station, where Anthony got out the sewer hose and I went inside to make some snacks for our drive day. A minute later, Anthony came around to the door to inform me that he wouldn't be able to dump. The sewer pipe was loose going into the ground. Anthony said that when he tested it with gray water, it seemed fine, but as soon as he began to dump the black, the wastewater began to spew up from the ground. Just our luck. That became "poopsie" number two in our travels, neither of which were actually our fault.

Needless to say, we wouldn't be able to finish dumping at this station. I put away my snacks-in-progress and Anthony did his best to sanitize himself and the dump station. We left a note that said "Sewer pipe not secure" for the next campers. We also caught a maintenance worker and let him know.

We didn't need to travel far because this state park has two other campground loops on the other side of the park, with their own dump station. Granted, it still took us close to ten minutes to get up there because we needed to go up a hill, over to Loop B, turn around in Loop B, and then approach the dump station from the other side. This one was working fine, and so we resumed our respective tasks.

We were headed to another campsite where we wouldn't have sewer, so we needed to make sure we flushed our tanks out really well. After dumping black and gray, Anthony closed the gray tank and refilled it with fresh water. While he did this, I took my now-made snacks out to the truck to sit with the animals. A few minutes later, I returned to the trailer, and on my way back, noticed water dripping from underneath.

"What are you doing?" I asked. Anthony said that he had accidentally overfilled the gray tank. The trailer now had water all over the floor from the bathroom, past the entry, and into the bedroom. Thankfully it was fresh water! Clearly flustered, Anthony remarked that "for the first time ever," the bathroom sink filled up before the kitchen sink, implying that he didn't catch it because he was monitoring from the kitchen. This is 100% false because the bathroom sink has always filled first, simply because that's how the pipes go! Anthony knew this but was having a tough time thinking clearly. Who could blame him? We were coming off a very stressful day, hadn't slept well for two nights, and were now dealing with unforeseen issues on a travel day.

At this point, we didn't think we were experiencing a blog-worthy story, so our photos are lacking. The best we can do is show the heap of towels that Anthony used to sop up all of the water. It was almost every towel we own. Another plus side to owning an all-aluminum rig: We don't need to worry about rotting wood when it floods!

We cleaned up the water and finished dumping. Before we left, I decided to do one more walk-around because I knew our brains were not functioning optimally, and that might cause us to miss something important. My walk-around usually consists of checking the hitch, making sure the door and all compartments are locked, checking the tires, and looking under the trailer. I had just finished checking the tires on the passenger side when something told me to turn back and look again. When I did, I couldn't believe what I saw. I immediately walked back to the truck, staring at Anthony through the passenger side window as he rolled it down and asked, "Oh no, what did I do now?!" Given his state of fluster, that's a valid response, but this time, it wasn't something Anthony did. It wasn't something either of us did. And we were so close to not catching it.

This was where our morale really dipped. Hadn't we been through enough?! We had already leaked rainwater through our roof, black water through the sewer port, fresh water through half our rig, and now air from our tire?!

The tire still seemed relatively inflated and our TPMS hadn't alarmed, but when we checked it, the pressure was in the low 60s, 30psi lower than it should have been. We didn't have any cell service, but I had remembered reading somewhere that the visitor center has WIFI. We drove down to the parking lot.

Anthony went inside and asked the workers for recommendations for tire places. We needed to find a place that could work on RVs and that was hopefully only a short drive away. Ross Tire to the rescue! They were located 15 minutes away in downtown Wynne and said to just bring the trailer on by. We filled the tire with air before we left just for good measure, and we headed on our way.

We don't know much about tire repair, and so far on our travels we've only gotten a flat once, on our truck tire, and because the treads were worn, it couldn't be repaired. Around that time, we bought some stuff to repair tires, but we honestly never looked at it or figured out how to use it. Either way, seeing how big and deeply embedded the bolt was, we needed to rely on the pros.

20 minutes and $15 spent at Ross Tire, we were plugged and sent on our way.

It was now 3:30PM and we had just enough time to make it to our next campground before sunset. We drove 3 hours and 15 minutes straight, with no stops along the way. It was sheer motivational frustration pushing us at that point. I kept checking the TPMS to make sure the plug was holding. I wasn't convinced that the hole could actually be repaired – a gut instinct I would give into later on. But, for the 180 miles that day, the tire pressure stayed within normal bounds.

After everything we had been through, we were surprised that we actually made it to our next campground as planned. We settled in for 13 days at our beautiful lakefront site at Crystal Springs. We had some big plans while we were there, so we could only hope that nothing else would wreak havoc on our travels.

With nearly two weeks to think about the tire fiasco, I kept going back to my gut feeling that we needed a second opinion. One evening, I went online to do some research. All of the websites warned against plugging a tire if A, the bolt/nail/screw was over a quarter-inch wide, and B, if the hole was on or near the sidewall. Our hole wasn't on the wall and wasn't on the tread, but was in the middle, on the shoulder. A helpful article by Sullivan Tire said the shoulder was a no-no as well. We were 0 for 2 on the plug holding up long-term. That bolt went in too close to the edge, and it was definitely larger than a quarter-inch.

We made plans to find a Discount Tire to bring the trailer on our next drive day. Discount Tire replaced our old tires with these current ones and they are all under warranty, so we could get this tire replaced there for no added cost. I checked Google Maps for locations along our route from Crystal Springs up to our next stop in Blue Eye, MO. A Discount Tire in Russellville popped up.

We called them and explained our situation. As luck would have it, they said they had one identical tire to ours in stock. We made plans to stop by on our travel day that coming Tuesday. They would look at the tire and replace it if needed.

Monday evening, we were doing our night-before-travel tasks, including putting our destination in our Garmin RV GPS and double-checking our route. That's when I realized I did something stupid. Our RV GPS was taking us on mostly interstates, back toward Little Rock and then north on US 65. Sure enough, our RV Trip Wizard map was showing the same route.

I hadn't done my due diligence to check our RV-safe route and instead only looked at Google Maps. Our route was not actually taking us through Russellville. We did some research and discovered that technically we could RV the route Google Maps was taking us, but those roads are a scenic byway straight through the Ozarks, with lots of twists and turns and steep grades. Furthermore, our travel day forecast was saying rain. The scenic route did not seem safe.

We had a choice to make. We could go to Russellville anyway, about 40 miles out of our way each direction, or we could find another Discount Tire. Since now we'd be going through Conway, a larger city as far as cities in Arkansas go, we looked for a Discount Tire there. Sure enough, we found one. It was too late to call them, and so we made our gameplan for the next day: Call Conway on the way out of Crystal Springs. If they could see us and had the tire we needed, we would go there. If they didn't, we would drive the extra distance to Russellville.

The man on the phone at Conway told us that they did not have our exact tire in stock, but they had a similar one. However, when he mentioned the specs, he noted that the tire was a 10-ply, aka E rated/a lower load bearing, and our current tires were 14-ply, aka G rated/a higher load bearing. We had upgraded our tires in Utah when we were upgrading everything. We thanked him for the information, but decided it made more sense to head to Russellville, where they had our exact replacement.

We called Russellville to let them know when we were an hour away, and when we arrived, a man immediately came out to help us. He checked our tire and without hesitation said, "Let's get you a new tire." Anthony went inside and came out a few minutes later. "Guess what!" he exclaimed. "We're going to Conway!"

Backtracking our 40 miles, he explained everything to me. Evidently, the guy on the phone didn't thoroughly check which tires we had on our trailer, assumed they were 10-ply (because most are), and said he had one in stock. They did not have the 14-ply. Who did? Conway! The guy we spoke to in Conway must have done the same thing, assuming our tires were 10-ply and not letting us know they had 14-ply available. They didn't have our exact brand (Carlisle) but they had Heartlands, another reputable brand. So we went all the way out to Russellville for nothing. Right then, we realized that we would need to explicitly specify that we have 14-ply tires whenever we speak to Discount Tire. Turns out the load rating isn't mentioned unless the worker goes into the specs in more detail, so we think this is how the workers miss the memo.

The worker at Russellville also mentioned in passing that ideally we should have gotten a plug and patch if we were getting a repair at all, so the plug alone wouldn't have held up. We're just thankful that it had for the 300ish miles we had driven the trailer. No air had leaked since the plug.

Russellville called Conway to give them the head's up that we were coming. About an hour later, we arrived. Anthony went inside to check in. Then we waited. Discount Tire has a cool system, where when you check in, they provide a link via text where you can check your status. However, when Anthony did this, he saw that our "recommend time of arrival" was 1:34PM and our "completed service" would be at 2:29PM. It was only 1PM and they expected us to be there for an hour and a half to get one tire changed?! We understood that we didn't have an appointment and therefore might have to wait, but they had known we were coming for an hour. What was going on?

Anthony went back inside, where he talked to the manager. The manager said that, unless a customer enters the queue online, the store doesn't put anyone in the queue until they actually arrive. It didn't matter that another Discount Tire assured them we were on our way. Had we known that, we would have gone online and put our name in! Getting the vibe that this manager didn't give one scrap of rubber that our behemoth was taking up a third of their parking lot, Anthony told him this was "beyond ridiculous," and walked out of the store. Bold move to show Boston attitude in Arkansas, but it seemed to pay off. A few minutes later, one of the workers came out and told us to pull our trailer around. He changed our tire, and 15 minutes later, we were good to go.

We had left our campsite at Crystal Springs at 8:20AM and didn't arrive to our next campsite until 6:30PM. That clocks as one of our longest travel days, but we counted our wins. Our tire is now replaced. We didn't have as much rain as predicted. We had time to stick around Conway and grab lunch before heading back on the road. And we went from one beautiful COE campground to another, arrived on time, and got to enjoy our new view before the sun set.