Travel Blog

Soooooo, where was I? Oh yes, on US 85 about 22 miles north of Lusk, Wyoming. We heard a weird noise and I turned to Phil and asked, "What the hell was that?" Phil looked out the window and said, "That's our tire bouncing across the road." Luckily we were very close to the cross-section of SR270 and Phil was able to pull off the main road into a turnoff. We thought we'd just be changing a tire or something (even though I guess since we watched the entire tire bounce across the road, we should have remembered that the lug nuts were probably long gone), but we get out of the truck and see this:

And this:

I guess when the tire was shearing off the axel, it decided to take the entire back end of our house with it.

There were some road construction workers nearby, and when Phil went to retrieve the tire, a worker talked to Phil and said he'd send his supervisor over to talk to us and help us out if we needed it. It seems we were in a cell phone dead zone, so we couldn't call anyone from there. The supervisor came over and offered to take us to the nearest town, but we had the truck, and it was fine, so we thanked the guy, unhitched, and drove up the road until we could get cell phone coverage.

The first call we made was to our insurance folks. We never did a claim before, so we needed our hands held, but the person we talked to was very nice to us (even though she scolded us a bit for leaving the accident scene, but she backed off when we told her we wouldn't be calling her if we had stayed at the scene). She asked about our welfare, and then tried to help us find a nearby RV dealership who could take a look at our rig. We conferenced-called about three dealerships who either told us they didn't deal with our kind of RV or else they were booked for weeks and couldn't see us right away. The GMAC lady sort of left us to our own devices after that, but told us our claim adjuster person should be calling us by noon the next day, and she gave us that person's name and phone number. So Phil and I sort of felt a bit abandoned and weren't sure what else to do, so we drove into Lusk to get on one of our computers to search for some more RV dealerships. We finally found a place who was willing to look at our RV. It was over 100 miles away in Whitewood, South Dakota. But we weren't picky at that point. Then we asked if they had towing capabilities to get us there, and they said, "No."

So our next mission was to find a towing service who could get us from where we were to where we needed to be. About five calls later, we actually found a towing service in the town of Lusk who was willing and able. It was Jordan Auto, and if you ever need help when you're near Lusk, give Jim a call. He was absolutely awesome and helped us tremendously through a very hard situation. And watching him do his job was very interesting once you get past the fact that it's your house getting tugged up onto a flatbed.

He was going to take us that very evening, even though it was already near 6:00 p.m. The accident had happened around 1:00 p.m., and Phil and I were wiped out from the experience, so we asked Jim if his wife would like to have him home for dinner that night. He said that would be great and that we could meet him at his place early the next morning and we'd all head out for Whitewood. He recommended a good place to stay for the night, and told us about the best place to eat in town. Nice guy, that Jim.

The RV is now at the dealership in Whitewood. Phil and I are being put up in style at the dorms at Custer State Park. They bent the rules for us and are letting us keep all our animals in the dorms with us. Very cool of them, we think. Now we're just waiting until Monday to get the estimate on how much it would cost to fix our house, or if it's a total loss. Keep us in your thoughts as we would really like to have a home again very soon.