We left Winnemucca, Nevada headed to Massacre Rocks State Park on the Snake River in Idaho. But what should have been a 6 hour traveling day turned into a 14 hour nightmare.
We’re driving on Interstate 80 across Northern Nevada and I’m driving since it is big wide and reasonably straight Interstate highway. We are about 5 miles from our turn off to go North into Idaho. When all of a sudden there was what sounded like an explosion back near the trailer.
We slow down significantly and see there is a pull off about a half mile ahead. Wayne got out to look at the trailer and finds one of our tires has literally exploded. (see the photos below) Wayne gets out all of his tools and pulls the tire off and replaces it with the spare.
We have about 3 hours more traveling to get into our campground in Idaho. So Wayne decides to go on and chance it without a spare. Should be able to get to our destination without a spare and then we can get the tire replaced.
Wayne takes over driving and we turn North down a two lane state highway headed for Idaho. About 20 miles up the road, we hear another loud bang. This time we don’t have anywhere to pull off. But we have to pull off on to the side of a steep shoulder.
Wayne gets out and sure enough, we’ve blown another tire. We now don’t have a spare. What are we going to do. The Lord takes care of us and a Nevada highway maintenance guy pulls up in his truck behind us. He helps Wayne get the axel jacked up and pull off the tire that has now wrapped big sections of tread around the axel. They strap up the axel and the guy knows a dirt road that pulls off about a mile up the road.
We inch along at 10 miles an hour and pull the trailer off through a cattle guard and on to some ranch land. We park the trailer, pull it off the truck, load the now two blown tires and wheels into the truck and head the 20 miles back into a small town on the Interstate. Luckily they have a big tire store that has our tires. They quickly replace the two tires. We drive back out to the trailer, put one on the missing wheel axel, hook up the trailer and drive the 20 miles back into town.
It is now almost 5 pm but they are open until 6 pm and we pull the trailer into a big 18 wheeler truck bay and have them replace all 6 tires on the trailer plus the spare. We are NOT going to take a chance on this happening again.
We decide to go ahead and drive through the evening to get to Massacre Rocks State Park in Idaho. By the time we are able to grab some dinner and head out it is 7 pm. We pull into the campground around 10 pm. Everyone is gone, of course, and it is pitch dark. So we pull into a parking lot, open up the trailer and spend the night.
The next morning we awaken to a wonderland. It is gorgeous. We are only about 75 feet from the Snake River and it is beautiful. (See the photos below.)
But this has been a snake bit trip so far and it isn’t over. Wayne is pulling the trailer into our camping spot which is a little tight with juniper trees on both sides of the drive and a narrow road leading to it.
When all of a sudden there is a big scraping sound from the back of the trailer. The wheels on one side have gone down into a big hole across a big boulder that almost destroys the pull out stairs to our back door. Wayne now has another project. Go to the RV place in town and order some more stairs and replace them, bend everything back into shape so we can travel again.
We have spent two weeks here. It is one of the best places we’ve stayed so far. The state park campground is always almost empty except on weekends. We got our Kaboat (inflatable boat) out went up river a couple of miles while Wayne fished and Cora cowered in the bottom of the boat. (See photos below.)
We are in a canyon, with big volcanic rock formations similar to the ones on the west side of Albuquerque. The Snake River is very wide and very deep here. They tell us it is 70-80 deep in places. A little different than the Rio Grande in Albuquerque.
The Oregon wagon train trail passes through the park. And several famous Indian attacks happened here. There is a famous wagon train camp stop just up the road that they call Register Rock. There is a huge boulder with trail traveler’s names and dates they were here from the mid-1800’s.
We took a short driving trip down to a famous waterfall on the Snake River near Twin Falls, ID called Shoshone Falls. It drops into the Snake River Canyon where Evil Kneivel made his attempted jump across the canyon. Then we drove to a famous place on the California wagon train trail that splits off from the Oregon trail called City of Rocks.
It was another stopping place on the trail. It was in a big valley and had huge rock outcroppings everywhere. We took lots of photos.
In the next couple of days we are breaking camp and heading for Yellowstone National Park. It has been on Wayne’s bucket list for a long time. More on that in our next post in a week or so.
Linda and Wayne Story
