2013-10-13 Broken Axle on I-81

Our first day of driving on our trek south to Atlanta Saturday October 12 was a beautiful sunny day with lovely fall colours as we headed through New York and Pennsylvania. We opted for a motel rather than a campground so that we could drive later in the evening. We needed one with a large parking lot and the one we chose – the Days Inn in Carlisle, PA fit the bill. In fact the parking lot was so big that we could have parked a whole fleet of Titaniums in it. There was a great diner next to the motel so we could stay hitched up and get an early start on Sunday morning.

Despite the clouds and intermittent rain, we made good time on Sunday as we headed south on I-81. Around 4 pm, Paul pulled over on the shoulder to investigate the smoke coming from the tire area of the Titanium. The cause was a broken trailer spring which damaged one of the tires. We waited over 3 hours for Good Sam RV repair to send a mobile crew to help us. As it got dark, we were getting less and less comfortable sitting on the narrow shoulder as the 18 wheelers went speeding by us. Once the repairman arrived, things improved since he was able to brace the spring in less than 20 minutes. He then took us to a Walmart about 10 miles south of where we had been stranded. He promised to be back before 9:00 am on Monday morning so we found a small BBQ restaurant for dinner and bought a few groceries at the Walmart. True to his word, he and a helper returned; found a new spring; made the repairs and had us on our way by 10:15 am. We knew that as long as we had no other mishaps, we would be able to check-in at The Rally on time on Tuesday morning.