More New Tires! That Makes 25 this year!

Wow!  More tires!  

You can’t be serious!  

Last August, we were travelling from Montrose,  Colorado to Marysvale,  Utah when we blew two tires on the camper.

Read these two previous post to hear about that!

Though we bought 19 tires last August, that did not include our Dodge Dually.  We drove all the way from Virgin, Utah to a campground near Branson, Missouri with only one cracked rim on the camper, which is quite common for us.  That happened somewhere between Grants, New Mexico and Amarillo, Texas.  My husband was doing his normal check of the tires, rims, and motors before we would head out the next day when he came across the crack in the camper rim.  He found a local tire place that got us one pretty quick and we got it put on and left the next day.

But, back to the current wheel problem.

 Thankfully, my husband is very meticulous when it comes to motors, campers, vehicles, and basically anything you would consider “a guy’s job”.  A couple of days ago he came in and broke the bad news, “Honey, we have to buy tires for the truck.”  Oh no, I thought.  Seriously?  We just bought 19 tires last fall and now we have to buy six more!  Plus, the truck tires cost more than the other ones. 

Shae was looking over all of our machines, motors, tires, and equipment – on an almost daily inspection – when he spotted the bulge in the back outside tire of our dually.  He told me how thankful he was that we had made it to Missouri without it busting.  So since my oldest son needs our van for his new job, I asked my husband to get new tires quick, which he had already planned on doing.

Today we made the 40 minute trip to Walmart to get the new tires on.  We have always used locally owned tire shops but this time we thought we would go with a nationally owned shop in case we have problems down the road.  When we go to a local shop in a particular town we can almost guarantee that we will not be going back to that town again.  If the shop does bad work, we can’t just bring it back and say, “Fix It!”  We might be 1000 miles away before we catch their mistake!  Believe me, this has happened to us.

After we arrived at Walmart, my husband glanced at the tire with the bulge in it and the bulge had tripled its size in just a short drive!  The Lord really protected us, as usual!

He decided on a NITTO Dura Grapplor tire.  We hope it will do good for us.

Tires are definitely something we have to budget for.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Nitto-205-130/19473690  These are the tires that Shae decided on.

The rim was welded back at one time.  Now, we just replace them.

Shae checks our tires often which has saved many a problems on the road.

Sometimes we get the same rim and other times we do not.

Sickness in the camper is the poops!

Sickness in a camper is no fun.  There isn't anywhere to get away and have peace and quiet.  If I want to quarantine a child to attempt to keep the illness from spreading I might as well forget it.  There is no where to go!

Colds are hard enough but then think about eight people with diarrhea   Or what about all having the pukes at the same time!

Miserable is an understatement.  Sickness on the road is one of the things I dislike most about traveling full-time.  

And it never fails, whenever we visit family we end up sick!  Why is that?

With eight people in our family it can sometimes take weeks before a sickness cycles through everyone.  

Imagine a diarrhea smell permeating everything in your bedroom for days, because, remember -

the bathroom is in my bedroom!

Not only can you smell the diarrhea but you can hear the person going diarrhea   It is quite embarrassing when one of us girls has that issue and everyone is giggling at the table as they hear us go!

Of course, puking is bad enough anywhere, but in these small quarters it is extremely difficult.  We have had bowls and garbage cans stationed through out the camper for all who would need it.  Thankfully we have not had that type of flu this year and hopefully we will continue to avoid it.

If you need a nap - too bad!  There is no way it will happen.  During the first year of my new baby's life, I had two naps with him.  I had to stay up at night with him and then go all day.  

I am not complaining or griping I am just stating the facts.

So, the moral is -if you are sick - stay away!

You have no idea......

We spent the weekend with family and at
the Hoover Dam with visitors from all over
the world, so who knows where Tytus got
sick from!

My Toes are Cold in the Camper

winter jackets were necessary
at Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

I am freezing my butt off! 

Well, I wish, but it really is chilly here!  

Campers are typically not made for warm weather.  They tend to be a bit drafty and have very little insulation.  With us on the road often, we have small propane tanks that cost more to fill. We go through about a tank a week.  Thankfully the prices here in southern Utah are very reasonable at $20 a tank.  I'd like to say we have 35 lb tanks but that is just a guess based off of a memory buried in the deepest recesses of my tired brain.

We have two electric heaters besides the furnace.  With lots of blankets and warm jammies we do pretty good at night.  It is just when I sit in the slide out to type on my computer late at night that I really start to get chilled.

Weather is a huge deciding factor in where we camp next.  It is too cold to head north and we don't want to spend the gas money to drive too much further south.  Yet, I'm starting to wonder if the cost of gas for the vehicles to head further south might be the same as what we are paying for propane and electric to stay warm in a cooler climate.

Don't get me wrong, we are not in the frigid temperatures of central or mountainous Utah.  Still, with below freezing temps and the cool March winds picking up, we can still feel the bite of winter.

So is life in the desert; the days warm up nicely and the nights freeze.

I try hard to not complain.  Before long it will be too hot and our electric bill at the campgrounds will reflect our air conditioner attempting to cool this huge beast.  

When the sun sets in the desert it can get very cold!
Zion National Park, Utah