Double excitement! 2/11/14

Woke to a chilly morning but it's going to warm up considerably.  We want to go to the thrift shop and the laundromat so we think we'll break camp early and then park the rig and the car in a central location and use the car to bee-bop around Daytona Beach.  Might even find the beach?  

On a side note, we were disappointed in the free WIFI here...it was extremely spotty at best.  That's why the blog was late yesterday.  We double checked and this is not a Good SAMs Park and I don't think we'd stay here again.  

A little excitement soon after we left the campground...we were on a limited access highway and needed to turn around.  Found a good place where we could do a wide u-turn which Steve needed to take rather fast because of on-coming traffic.   As we completed the turn I heard a car honk it's horn.  Then a pickup pulled up beside us on the left, made the motion for Steve to roll down his window and he told Steve one of our compartment doors had come open and we lost a couple of quarts of oil onto the ground.  Then a another pickup does the same thing on my side and yells that we "lost half our load back there."

So we turn around and try to retrace our steps...we finally found the site of our spill and there is a lot of traffic.  Steve pulled over into the breakdown lane on the right and we tried to see what was on the road.  We saw the quarts of oil and some rags, but no milk crate that the oil and rags were in and no chair that Steve thought might have been in that compartment.  Cars are wizzing past and we both agreed that it was too dangerous for Steve to even get out.  We decided not to pursue any pick-up.  

Lesson learned that it's not enough to just walk around the rig to see if everything is secure; he has to physically touch and check every compartment.

Excitement addendum:  Steve later checked and the latch on that compartment was latched but the latching mechanism had come loose and he was able to just tighten a screw on the inside of it.  Still going to do a better walk-around before departure, though.

We went to two thrift shops, did two loads of laundry and then Walmart to get a new sewer hose, propane tank and two important wrenches that Steve discovered had also flown out the compartment door, and finally got on the road again.  Of course it was too late to get to the original campground we had picked out in Melbourne/Grant so we selected a new one in Titusville.  Then we had our second even bigger excitement of the day!

Yep, we had a blow-out on 95!  (BEFORE YOU READ ANYMORE, WE ARE FINE!). I was trying to nap on the bed in the back and we blew an interior tire that felt like it was right under the bed.  Steve pulled over and said, "What was that?"  I knew immediately what it was from the sonic boom, the flapping and the terrible smell.

After we took a few seconds to get our bearings, Steve called Good SAMs Emergency Roadside Assistance and a tow truck was here in less than thirty minutes.  Our spare tire appears to be brand-new because it still has the stickers on it (thank you George!) so the guy is using that.  I've got the window open and I heard the guy say we have some dry-rot on at least one other tire and tomorrow we're going to want to get all of our tires checked out.  I'm sure someone at the campground can tell us where to go.  

We're going to sleep well tonight, I hope.