Smoking!

Well we thought Monday was eventful & slow! Hah! That was before today 🙂

Left the hotel in Du Bois, PA around 9:45am. Had to go buy breakfast & then buy some hay for the goats & horse I have on board. We had picked them all up yesterday but in the rush at the end had forgotten to pick up the bale of hay! Finally on the road for proper around 10:45. Truck was acting a little strange but I didn’t take make much notice as sometimes it will give a little judder (always has done) & then clear itself. Well it suddenly started juddering constantly & I caught the sight of black smoke. Uh oh! Everyone looked out & we thought it was one of the tires. Saw a Rest Area sign for 1 mile away & I decided we needed to get there.

Limped into the Rest Area just as Richard called. Keeping him on the phone we parked & got out to check the tires. Nothing was wrong! BTW this was 11:15am. Put the engine on again & realized the smoke was coming from the exhaust! OH! Pretty obvious we were not going anywhere fast. Richard started calling Ford Dealerships in the area & the nearest one that could help us was in Youngstown,OH – 50 miles away. So he then had to find a tow company. Quite simple you say. NO! Pennsylvania has a law that prohibits towing a truck & a trailer so that meant we had to have a tow truck for the truck & then a regular truck to hook up the trailer & bring it along. The towing company were superb in getting it all arranged but of course it all took time. They finally got to us at 3:15pm.The tow truck took the truck to the Ford garage & Tracy took us and the trailer to the hotel in Youngstown.

We took Caleb’s seat out to put in Tracy’s truck & as soon as Caleb saw it he sat in it – on the grass! Hannah strapped him in 🙂

We got a nice bill of $539! OUCH! BUT in all this we were incredibly blessed. The weather was beautiful & we were stopped at a Rest Area so the kids could get out & play. Can you imagine if we had broken down on the Interstate & had to stay there for 4 hours! That would have been awful! We hadn’t been at the Rest Area very long when we met a trucker from England. A few minutes later he came over to where we were with Pepsi & candy for everyone which was really sweet of him.

Got to the hotel at 4:30pm& so were actually able to have a leisurely swim & enjoy some down time by the pool. The truck is now fixed. Apparently  it was the Rocker Arm Assembly & a couple other small things so now I am waiting for their call & hoping I can pick it up this evening to save some time in the morning. They are open until midnight. Once again this could have been SO much worse.

A day behind but that’s OK.

Liz