We headed out early, not looking forward to the 377 miles to Claremore. The roads in Missouri were good. At the Oklahoma border, I-44 turns into a toll road. We stopped at the first service center to get some fuel and stretch our legs. While doing our walk around, Leslie pointed at one of the tires on the passenger side and asked if it was ok. There were a few flat spots on the tire from the scrubbing in turns, but nothing extreme. So, we headed on down the road. We were about a mile and a half from our exit from the toll road when there was a loud KBANG. David quickly checked the mirrors and kicked out the cruise control. He could see pieces of rubber flying out behind us. We had obviously blown a tire. The trailer was handling normally, so we decided to continue to the exit so we could pull over away from the 75mph traffic. Sure enough, the tire Leslie had pointed out had blown (she jinxed it). The other two tires on that side were handling the load. We called the Good Sam club to get roadside assistance to come help changing the tire. While on the phone with them, we decided to exit to a gas station at the end of the ramp so we could be out of traffic. GSC sent a roadside support contractor to help us change the tire, but it took him an hour to get to us. We have a full-size spare, so it was just a matter of using the trailer levels to tilt the trailer up so we could pull the tire and put the spare on. Then we continued on to the East Claremore KOA ($42.50 with KOA Discount) only to arrive after dark and 5 minutes after the office closed. We were surprised to find that there was not an after-hours arrival package. With no one to talk to, we decided to grab and open pull through and get with the office in the morning. The travel gods had caught up with us today.
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| Entering Oklahoma along I-44/Route 66 |
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| Shredded tire |
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| Blown tire |
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| Chunks missing |
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| More chunks missing |
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