Well...

Faithful blog readers may recall other blog posts entitled "Well...". They rarely tell of a day where everything worked as planned, and this one is no different!

We left Thousand Trails Harbor View at about 11am after having watched our home church's service (we are up to April 16 now! just a few weeks behind!), and flushed the tanks well anticipating several nights of boondocking as we travel north.

Not too many miles away, we crossed the Potomac River on the 301 bridge and were welcomed into Maryland.

Does anyone else thing that sign is a bit funny? "Leave No One Behind" aka "You're welcomed here, but keep on moving, and don't leave anyone behind!"

Less than 20 minutes later, there were a few (several?) vehicles passing us pointing to the side of the road -- one of them put his arm out his driver's side window and pointed over the roof of his vehicle. Our fellow drivers thought we should get off the road... so we did. Thankfully the shoulder in this area was paved and wide enough for Gracie to get totally off the road.

We got out to try to figure out what the problem was - we could smell something that smelled like burning rubber. Carl stepped over the tow bar between Gracie and the Jeep and looked forward up the side of Gracie -- nothing. Then he looked at the Jeep...

Uh oh, that's not good...

Even though the shoulder was pretty wide, we didn't think that the Jeep was far enough off the road to risk changing the tire there, so we unhooked the Jeep and backed it up a little ways to get it further away from the travel lanes of Route 301.

As Carl backed up the Jeep, the whole tread of the tire rolled off the wheel. I don't think we're gonna be able to patch this one!

We discussed whether we should call CoachNet (they would send a tow truck and take the Jeep to the nearest authorized tire place or maybe would change it with our spare), or should we try to change it ourselves? We decided to give a try at changing it ourselves...

We pulled the bikes (and other stuff) out of the back of the Jeep, unearthed the jack, and figured out how to get the spare off (it is stowed underneath the back of the Jeep). We got our safety cones out to try to encourage passing cars to give us some room (it did not appear to make much difference). I pulled out the owner's manual and Carl figured out where the jack points were and got the jack underneath.

In case you've ever seen marks like this on the shoulder of the road, running on a tire blowout may have caused them.

The shattered tire along with our bikes at the back of the Jeep.

Before this point, we had not paid any attention to the spare on the Jeep (not good behavior on our part) -- it had a date code for 2011 and was definitely a used tire, so we weren't happy with the thought of traveling far on that. We had planned a stop in Waldorf, Maryland at Costco -- I did some searching and there was a Walmart, Sam's Club, and other tire stores all within a short distance of each other, about 11 miles away from where we were. I tried calling the Walmart tire department and got no answer. Sam's Club answered and said that they were first come-first served and open until 6pm (by now it was past 12:30pm). We decided to go to the Sam's Club, there was an NTB right next door. I drove Gracie and Carl followed in the Jeep.

Sam's Club had none of the tire size we currently had on the Jeep. I called NTB, and they had the tire size we needed, so we drove the Jeep over there.

We had discussed that we knew that the tires would need replacing later this year, and maybe this was our opportunity to go ahead and have new tires for our trip up to Canada. But, the only set of 4 tires that NTB had for the Jeep were their store brand, and the way the guy spoke about them didn't make us feel confident about that being a good choice. So, we decided to replace just the one, and to plan to try to get a set of 4 further up the coast before we got to Canada.

Thankfully the wheel had not been damaged -- new tire mounted and balanced...

... and installed on the Jeep (on the other side).

In planning our journey from Colonial Beach, VA to Newark, DE (where the Harvest Host was), I had planned that we could take US 301 pretty much all the way -- crossing over the Bay Bridge onto the eastern shore, not on limited access roads, but on, what should be, a good road. After our difficulty, and having observed that there were a lot of places on 301 where the shoulder would *not* have accommodated even the Jeep, much less Gracie, we decided to use the interstate route instead.

It's Sunday afternoon, it's Mother's Day, why is there so much traffic?!?!?

Because I had been thinking we were going to take 301, I had not fully researched the route that the Garmin was taking us on through Baltimore. Carl said, "That sign says, 'No Propane.'" Oh -- well, that is for the tunnel under the harbor... let me see how I-95 crosses the river -- whoops, it also uses a tunnel, and it also indicates no propane (we only have a 20# tank for our firepit). We considered just going ahead (the tank is turned off), but decided we had better find an alternate route. We had passed the point where we could have taken the Key Bridge or the long way around on the beltway west of Baltimore. We also noticed that the roads heading back the way we came (to get back to I-695 to the Key Bridge) were totally clogged with traffic. I was desperately trying to find a path that would take us to the Key Bridge... and we ended up getting off right down by Camden Yards.

We found a quiet street where we could stop for a few minutes while I tried re-routing us. I figured a way that we could get to I-83 to take us to I-695 west of the city and then back to I-95... I wasn't sure that the route was okay for Gracie (I couldn't get the RV-enabled Garmin to give us a route other than on the roads that were totally stopped) -- we decided to head out on surface streets...

I don't see any other trucks or big rigs on this street!

We were getting warnings from our other RV-enabled GPS (Rand McNally) that we were over-weight. I *knew* Carl and I should have worked on losing more weight! 

We eventually made it to I-83 to I-695 and back to I-95 - just over 1.5 hours lost with our detour.

We made a fuel stop at a TA in Elkton, MD, and then headed to our Harvest Host stop for the night...

Midnight Oil Brewing Company

We had a safe place to park for the night and got reasonably good rest.

I always think of Anne of Green Gables and her "Jonah Days" on days like this -- in case you aren't an Anne fan or don't remember, here is an article that talks about Jonah Days: http://comefillyourcup.com/2012/10/15/jonah-days-2/

We're praying for a less-eventful day on Monday!