It’s been a stressful few days

Our truck was finally fixed after 5 days including the weekend. The Serpentine belt wore out and shredded. The tensioner had to be replaced. Also the max air flow sensor had worn out. The mechanic ordered a new one, put that in and still didn’t work. We think it was defective because the next one he ordered worked perfectly. We stayed another day to drive around and make sure all was well. This whole time we were stranded at a Shell station 45 miles from the entrance of the Grand Canyon. Endless noisy traffic.

We met some truly wonderful people: Cathie who works part time at the Shell came over as soon as we got there and put the hood of the truck up. She helped with finding a mechanic, then finding a tow service (Adam’s Towing and Repair) for the truck, taking Vic to get a part, taking Vic to Adam’s to pick the truck up.

We also became friends with Cheryl, a Navajo woman selling handmade jewelry and crafts at a table in front of the Shell. There were several other women with tables but she’s the one we became friendly with. She even started calling Zoe “sweet sweet”, our nickname for her haha. She lives on a reservation in a house. Some people don’t have running water here, they get it brought in.

Yesterday we decided we were good to go and started off towards Needles, CA. 85 miles down the road one of the camper tires blew up and flew off, shearing off the lug nuts in the process.

There we were on I-40W, semis roaring by at 80 mph, not much of a shoulder, it was dreadful. Called AAA and they were useless. After calling around to several local towing services we realized no one had a tow capacity for the camper. We had to drive very slowly to the next exit and luckily on the off ramp there was a gravel area big enough for us and 20 other campers.

One guy we talked to, Jack, has a tow service and is a mechanic but his truck isn’t running. However he tried his best to help us in some way. Vic talked to him a couple of times. Jack gave us several names and numbers of locals to call. None of that panned out and we eventually called Eric, the mechanic we had for the truck 85 miles back at Williams AZ, near the Shell. On the last call Jack asked if we had food and water. He was prepared to bring us whatever we needed. He is a man of such kindness I can’t believe he is so down on his luck. We went to his house this morning – we had to meet this guy. He’s a wealth of information.

Eric, the mechanic from Adam’s Towing has rounded up everything (cross your fingers) and will be here this afternoon to get the camper back in the road. We need way more than just a tire.

That’s our update. Wish us luck.