Don & Lori See America

Miles Traveled: 148

Total Traveled: 18,248

We left Tom & Liz's yesterday with high hopes. We're ready to get south for the winter. The fates, however, wanted us to slow down and enjoy the weather, apparently.

Twenty miles after we started, we pulled into a Love's travel center to dump our week's accumulation of waste and fill the truck's fuel tank. That's when Lori noticed the low right-rear tire on the camper. Uh-oh. A quick check showed 45 lbs of pressure, instead of the recommended 80.

Since we were by an air hose, I ran the pressure back up where it belonged and started dumping. By the time I was done dumping, the tire was back down to 60 lbs. Not a good sign. When I took the gauge off, though, I heard a slight hiss. On closer inspection, the valve stem was loose and leaking air.

I tightened the stem and refilled the tire. A half-hour later, after eating lunch, the tire was still at 80 pounds. Of course, between the dumping, fooling with the tire, and lunch, we lost almost 1 and a half hours at the Loves.

Although we planned to make it south of Birmingham, we called it a day in Cullen, AL, about 50 miles short of our intended goal. We'd both had enough of a day, and we've got a week or more to get to Florida, so there's no rush.

Since Lori had checked weather before we left, we were expecting a very rainy Tuesday, so I just registered for two nights instead of one. All day it's been a fairly constant rain, so we made the right call. We'll head south again tomorrow.