Whoops! Worried about the wrong thing!
Well, we made it. I’m sitting in our little trailer in a campground in College Park, Maryland. With A/C running—!—which has always felt like glamping to me.
We had several sort-of-boring-just-driving-for-hours days, although the scenery was always beautiful, and we thought yesterday would be another. It was for many hours, in fact. We made it through a corner of Virginia and into Maryland.
A bucolic rest area in Virginia. To enlarge the picture, click on it. To see the caption on your phone, click on the small dot in the lower righthand corner. (None of these below have captions.)
THEN…the truck broke down. Going up a slight hill, it started to stutter and go super slow. Randy pulled over, checked the motor, and discovered the transmission fluid had pretty much all drained out. It was blown all over the side of the trailer. 20 miles from the campsite! So close.
We called Triple A for roadside assistance. That’s been a lifesaver. They had to do separate “incidents” for towing the truck to repair and towing the trailer to the campsite. I rode along with the towing guy to the repair place while Randy waited on the side of the highway for the towing company to get the trailer. Triple A somehow blew it with that one. They kept telling Randy someone was on the way, he’d wait a while then call the towing place directly and they’d say they knew nothing about it, then he’d call Triple A again and it would happen again. Three times.
It was 6 pm when we stopped and this debacle took several hours. It started to get dark. Shortly after we pulled over, a truck stopped that was some kind of state-funded incident vehicle. I guess they patrol toll roads and the bridge road to help people or vehicles that are stranded. A very nice man, Sal, talked with us and stayed quite a while, till I left with the truck towing guy. Several hours later he came back to check on Randy, who was still there. By then we had pretty much given up on Triple A and he gave Randy the number of a local towing company he uses. Another nice man from Perez Towing came and towed the trailer to the campsite, where I was waiting. The people at the campsite made an exception and gave us a pull-through campsite so the towing company could easily place our trailer. By around 10 pm, Randy hooked things up and we went to bed.
I had been fretting and worrying about the electrical system working. Guess I should have worried about the truck breaking down. Because that would have helped. Ha!
This morning I bought eggs and milk at the camp store and made latte's and eggs. It felt like a miracle!
We just got a call from the repair shop, and Randy will leave in a little bit to Uber back to get the truck (thank God for Uber, too!). He texted Luke, “Retainer ring on tranny cooling line snapped. AAA fixed and flushed the line.” So there you go.
We had a morning walking tour in Washington DC scheduled for today, but they let me change it to tomorrow. It’s supposed to show us the most well-known monuments. I figured that would be a good way to kind of get the lay of the land and figure out where to go. Several friends have recommended things, too. Looking forward to seeing all the sights soon!