Aug 9th - Canon City CO

Aug 9th – Tues – to Canon City CO
We had a little mishap today. About 25 miles north of Colorado Springs on I25, we blew a tire on the 5th wheel. I was on the phone at the time and heard & felt the “explosion”. The bad news is that it took out or damaged quite a bit of the skirting around the tires.
The highway has a shoulder wide enough to drive on and we were able to pull up a bit to a gravel area and get off a little further. Terry started to walk back to get a large piece of tire off the left freeway lane when a police car pulled up behind us so we set to changing the tire. At this point, the first police car moved into the right freeway lane to force all the traffic to the left lane so we didn’t have to worry about getting hit. A second police car picked up more debris and then parked in the median with his lights on to warn traffic. It was the back, left tire that blew so we pulled the front tire up on a ramp and then jacked the back axle up a bit. We had traffic backed up for a long ways so Terry was really sweating trying to get it done quickly – and was helped by the 80+ temperature.
I got on the GPS & phone looking for RV repair places in Colorado Springs and we found one that wasn’t backed up 2 or 3 weeks. We were there for 1 ½ hours and the guy was still trying to finish the estimate so Terry got mad and we left. We were heading for Canon City anyhow so we carried on – with no spare as the Goodyear dealer in Colorado Springs would have had to order a tire. In Canon City, we drove past the RV park where we thought we were going to stay and said “no way”. This put us right in front of an RV dealer &service place so we pulled in. A very nice, knowledgeable service guy looked at the damage and said he could fix most of it right away by fabricating & painting but would have to order the fender skirt & decals.
We drove about 10 miles further to an area with many RV parks, picked Prospector’s RV and registered for a week. After we set up, we discovered that there is no Verizon access here! We headed back to town to file an insurance claim and get something to eat as we had eaten nothing all day and by now it was 4:30. While I waited on hold with the insurance company, Terry went into WalMart and got dinner.
Back at the RV park, we set out chairs and a table in the shade of a lovely tree right beside our site and had a much deserved drink with dinner.
I normally don’t post just one day on the blog but since we have no phone access, I thought it would be nice for people to know where we will be for a week. We are using the park wifi so at least we are not totally cut off from technology.