We have made many visits to this beautiful place but this trip was to be our first with Cynthia and John in their new Casita camper. We were all so excited. We were only thirty miles from Doris Campground located in the refuge on the shores of Quanah Parker Lake where Cynthia and John eagerly awaited our arrival when things took a “turn” for the worse. We were going about 60 mph when suddenly there was a loud booming sound that rocked the entire van. I struggled to keep the madly fishtailing rear-end of the van from going into the bar ditch full of water still running off from the recent flooding. I was trying to steer towards the middle of the very narrow road to avoid hitting oncoming bridge abutments when to my astonishment the left rear tire, minus the wheel, passed us on our left side. As the tire crossed the bridge it veered right in front of us stopping in the flooded ditch just ahead of us. Now struggling with the slow moving van I managed to get off to the side of the road just 30 feet from where the tire stopped. The rimless tire was partially submerged in the flood waters. The turbid brown waters flowing over the tire were creating a set of mini rapids. With no shoulder there was just barely enough room for the van to avoid the water filled ditch and not be sticking out in the oncoming traffic approaching form the rear. Getting out of the van I first retrieved the tire from the ditch and then hustled down the road to locate what remained of the shattered wheel which had come to rest in field across the ditch on the right side of the van. Coming back I cleared the road of dangerous debris that contained pieces of metal that had the potential for becoming shrapnel thrown off by the fast moving traffic that would surely be passing us. After over 115,000 miles the K2R2 had never once broken down or left us stranded until now. It was late Friday afternoon and we were stranded with no help in sight. Things were not looking very good at this point.
As I returned towards the van a John Deere Trail Gator from across the road driven by a local farmer was approaching Rebecca to see what the commotion was about. His wife was outside their house about a quarter mile west of us and had heard the boom and turned to witness the van careening left to right down the road. She had immediately called her husband who was away tending to some cattle and said, “I think some folks are going to need our help”. After introductions we all surveyed the damage. Behind the van was a half mile long white strip of scrapped asphalt road that stopped right behind a badly damaged left rear wheel rotor. The brake rotor looked like a shiny gray cheese wheel which had most of its bottom half shaved off by an giant asphaltic metal shaving Mandoline.
The farmer and I jumped in the Gator and drove up to his workshop to get some supplies and came back to begin the triage of the K2R2. The second set of neighbors from the other side of the road showed up at this point and we all started to confer on how best to solve the problem. One neighbor called his contact at the implement tire store in Chattanooga, OK, L & L Farm Supply and Tire. They dispatched a roadside assistance truck to help us. We were able to get the K2R2 up on a bottle jack to survey the extent of the damage. The prognosis was not good. The rotor, the brake caliper, and parking brake shield were kaput. Most of all we needed to get a tow truck to get us off the side of the road before nightfall. Tipping the Cat certified scales a little over 10,000 lbs., when fully loaded, the K2R2 needed a heavy duty tow truck. After dropping a pin for the driver to locate us we had to wait about an hour before the truck arrived. The tow of about 6 miles to Chattanooga was to be the most expensive part of the repair: $643.75 about $97.54 per mile. Our Oklahoma friends loaded us and all our food, clothes, and miscellaneous camping gear in the their dually pickup and followed the tow truck.
L&L was long closed for the day and when we arrived we hid the keys in a prearranged location and left the K2R2 perched on it’s barrel jack stand near the tire barn. Dale Hoffman, the mechanic, would find it awaiting his attention the in the morning. Under the rear of the van we also left a bucket of mostly useless part along with the rear axal wired to the van’s ladder. We were driven into the campground to join Cynthia and John to share our tale of woe and make a plan of action to salvage our trip together. Ours was a tall task as L&L is not an automobile repair shop and is closed on Sunday and only open until noon on Saturdays!
To be continued…….