Take me home country roads

    We took off form Indianapolis and we were bearing down on West Virginia when we experienced the worst breakdown we’ve encountered in our eight years on the road. 

    After filling gas and grabbing lunch in Ohio we were going down the road and Becky mentioned when she used the bathroom in the camper the freezer door was open and all the contents where thrown around the camper.  I figured we should probably turn on the fridge to have it cool down the food again. We try not to run with the fridge on but had to a lot last year with the heat so don’t worry about it as much as we did.  So we planned to pull over at the next rest stop and get it going.  We drove down the road a few miles and came up to a rest stop and pulled in.  

    Stepping out of the car I smelled burning rubber. Man that truck next to us stinks. I walk around the camper and feel the hubs to see if they are hot as I normally do just in case.  After rounding the camper I see it.  One of our wheel hubs is smoking, hub cap gone.  We are the stinking truck.  I run up and let the gang know it’s going to be a while.  Becky comes out and it’s smoking so bad our smoke alarm starts going off in the camper.  I open it up and its smoky in the camper. We grab some bottled water to spay off the hub and extinguish it as we’re really worried the camper could go up in flames. So 10 miles from the WV border, in the middle of seemingly nowhere, near Bidwell, Ohio we are stuck, the bearing is completely burnt up and the wheel is resting on the axle.  We’re so lucky we pulled over when we did or it would have burned up our camper or at the very least we’d have had a wheel rolling by us. We’re so glad we’re mostly in tack.  

    We start calling around and at first didn’t have much luck.  Lots of out of service area try this guy to only get the same story.  Then Becky gets a hit on a truck service company and they are really close so they dispatch a truck.  About a half an hour later the service man arrives and by his face we could tell we were in trouble. He wasn’t very optimistic but started tearing it apart to see exactly what we were dealing with. He got it apart with a lot of talk of needing a new axle, but let’s get it to the shop and see what everyone thinks.  

    So we leave the wheel off and slowly limp the trailer on three wheels to the shop which luckily is only the next exit a mile down the road.  We get there and more people have the same grimaces on their faces and are like yeah you’ll probably need a axle, we’ll call the trailer place down the road and have them look at it.  He comes and has a little more hope.  He’s like I think that might take the bolt yet there’s quite a few good threads. It’s Friday at 3:00 at this point,  he’s got stuff to do tonight and a full work load tomorrow but can get us in Monday to replace the axle if it comes to it.  Becky has long spiraled out of control.  I’m trying to keep it together as they present the options. Get a new hub assembly and install it and see if there’s enough treads to seat it properly and be safe on the road. Door one.  Door two is wait until Monday and get the axle done and be back on the road Tuesday (today is Friday). And door three is weld the new hub assembly to the axle to get us going and allow us to get a new axle at our next stop. I choose door one with a three kicker as it’s a natural progression and I can’t see us staying here the whole weekend. 

    Luckily the new hub worked. They got it on and everyone felt good about it.  They finished up a few minutes after five so didn’t even ruin anyone's weekend too much.  Whew. After a 3 hour drive, a 4 hour delay and 600 dollars getting the wheel fixed, we now had another 3 hour drive to our destination. 

    To add insult to injury, in that 3 hours we were getting gas and it was a pilot truck stop which is usually good but it was small and cramped and I couldn’t get the camper to the pump very well. After circling once I pulled it in close and got gas.  I knew I was in a bad spot but thought I could pull out ok if I used all the room in front of me but was worried the back might swing and hit the pump.  Becky got out to guide and we started to roll out. Was going alright when we had a miscommunication where I thought we were clear and could go… but I wasn’t and I clipped the cement barricade for the pump with the back corner of the camper and bent the bumper.  It split the corner, bending out the metal edging. Great just what we needed. So we fumed out of there: we’ll deal with it when we get to our campground.  

    

    We pulled into our site at Babcock state park outside of the New River Gorge.  After pulling in, we setup, I pounded the corner back together and sealed it up so it wouldn’t leak in case it rained, and went to bed.  My nerves were shot.  I hand it to the kids. they sat through it all and didn’t complain.  That’s a lot of unplanned sitting around. 

    Ok now back to the trip.  We have two activities planned for this stop.  The bridge walk where you walk the entire length of the bride from underneath on the service catwalk. And then white water rafting down the lower New River. I also figured we’d get some hiking in but we needed to sleep in a bit after yesterday's fiasco so only got one trail in. It was a  descent to a mine site and then back up. It was a short trail but exhausting. Lucas was in a mood and fretting the bridge walk the entire day. We said he had to come with but could back out if needed.  

    We got geared up with harnesses and they drove us to the drop off point. We walk up to the bridge and they start hooking us up. We have to stay in the order we hook you up in and the bus meets us on the other end.  Lucas was pretty much hemmed in at that point, so just went with the flow. I’m not sure how much he looked down, he was pretty much a statue the whole time eyes fixed forward. To his credit it was terrifying. I was freaking out myself and apologized for getting us into this insane mess.  It’s safe we’re harnessed in and the catwalk is part of the bridge and sturdy. What isn’t sturdy is the whole bridge it just shakes and vibrates with the traffic up above us. We were told it has to do that if it didn’t it would be a problem but I don’t think 18 year old Maddy, our guide, had the engineering degree to back up that claim. So we walked the .6 mile bridge 850 feet above the river.  Pretty cool to think about now.  

    The next day was white water rafting, everyone’s favorite. It’s our fourth time and this trip has some class 5 rapids on it which we haven’t had the opportunity to do in the past. The trip was a full day and started slow, a lot of class one to three rapids before lunch. After lunch it got intense and we went through various class 4 and 5 rapids. It was wild and exhausting. We made it through all the class 5s like champs, with just a few sketchy moments but we were in the boat and lived through it.  But on a class 3 rapid we hit a hole and it dumped 4 of us out of the boat.  Becky, Samus, myself, and a single rider put with our group went swimming.  It was a bit scary how quick it all happened. The boat bent in half and I thought it flipped. I was under the boat and had to get away from it and then swim back to get in. It’s a good story, glad everyone was ok and the water we were in wasn’t that rough. There were quite a few people thrown from other boats this trip some on the harder water. Everyone was ok but quite intense compared to our other rafting experiences.

That’s West Virginia for you, wild and crazy. We’re ready to move on.  Here’s some pictures from this stop.

Shot of the hub after we got it cooled down.  It’s toast. We were right near where the whole mothman thing went down, not saying a mythical creature had anything to do with it but I can’t rule it out.

“Eh I just don’t like the look of it, you might need a new axle”

It’ll be fine on three wheels it’s only a couple miles, oh and don’t go over forty… On the interstate.

Got it to Reds Truck Center, everyone came out to take a look at it.  They weren’t very optimistic but sure stuck with it and it all worked out.  Everyone was great I don’t recommend breaking down but if you do near Bidwell they’re the one to call. 

Shot of the shiny new hub assembly at the campsite.  We’re greasing the rest of the bearings at this stop before we hit the road again just in case. I usually do every year but had them manually packed last year and chose to skip the bearing buddy after that, not sure that’s what did it but is suspect number one and we’re taking that out of the equation before we move it again.

And the worst part of the day for me. Not much I could do about the bearing blowing up but hitting the concrete gas pump guard was all on me. Well and someone at Pilot for designing an impossible to navigate pump situation. But mostly me. I wasn’t thinking and didn’t get a before shot, this is after I hammered it back into place as well as I could and Dicor’d the heck out of it to hopefully make it water tight.

Campsite at Babcock State park

First look at the New River Gorge Bridge. Looking through my phone now I realize I didn’t get a good picture of it. It’s like the most photographed bridge so there are some good shots out there.  We got a real good look at it rafting but no camera.

Next view spot we got a closer look at it.

After looking at the bridge we took a hike. We picked the Kaymoor Miners Trail. It was easy going down. But quite a workout coming back up.

 

We reached the mine site. There were 800 stairs to go to the bottom close to the river, we skipped those and called it good at this level. Well I really wanted to go but most likely would haves died if we did, it was hard enough dragging myself back up.

Becky and me in front of a ventilation shaft.  Cold air was pouring out of it like an AC on high

Gearing up for the bridge walk

At the beginning before getting on I snuck a shot.  It looks pretty sturdy.

And we’re all strapped in and starting.  Luke looking back for the last time. There’s no turning back now.

Very cool views. But scary. The vibrations were the worse for me. Until I started thinking of the Molly Shannon scene from Talladega nights, that made me laugh and helped get through the rest of the walk.

We’re not half way yet you can see the curvature of the bridge it’s curved so we’re going slightly uphill yet.

It’s only 800 ft. down

New River below. Fun fact New River got it’s name from a surveyor/map maker guy who just put A New River on his map to signify yet another river and the name New River stuck.

We made it, safe in the other side.