Sam’s random musings

So we decided to go camping with the girls and Alison’s cousin’s family at Rustler Park in the Chiricahuas mountains and an adventure (or “series of unfortunate events” ensued). It all started the night before… it was raining a little bit (not unusual for this time of year it is monsoon season after all) as we were finishing dinner Abby was clearing the table when she screamed in pain and started hopping about. “I have a splinter, ow ow ow” I carried her to the bathroom to look at in the better light and seeing nothing, but her in obvious pain. Katie yells “mom, dad look a little scorpion”. So we called the pediatrician who told us that she would have a good bit of pain, but that ice would probably relieve that pain, but if she started to have muscle aches and/ or twitching or nausea that we should rush her to the emergency room. Fortunately she did not, she is tougher then you might think looking at the waif. But little did we know what this was warning us… our own ’series of unfortunate events’ … and so the adventure begins.

The morning started with taking the dog to the kennel and going to get ice and some wood (it had been raining on and off over night and it seemed like a good idea to bring a little dry wood) On a whim I picked up a couple of large tarps (12×14 and a 9×12) I had sent my one tarp to Phoenix with coach greg for the state swim championships). Then it was back home to pack the Pilot and get on the road… Tim gave us a call to let us know that he was a little behind schedule packing their truck since it was raining pretty hard at his place and with the lumber racks on his truck he can’t park in the garage. We decided to leave ahead of them and were going to get a nice camp spots and meet them there.

Rustler park is about 120 miles from Tucson with the last 25 miles up a narrow, winding switchback dirt road up to the top of a pass where the campground is (at about 8500 feet). Now for much of this roads length it is 1 and a half lanes wide with places for two cars to pass. It is supposed to be barely good enough for passenger car travel, but unless your passenger car is a rally car or a subaru I would not recommend it. It is rough and narrow and has sharp drop offs and in places is quite steep. We were working our way up the road and were about 6 miles from the campsite when there was a strange thumping… a flat…

So we were lucky, we were right next to a little pull off next to one of the “1 lane bridges” so I backed up a little bit and got on the flat spot and started to change the tire (now of course this required removing enough of our stuff from the back to get the tools) lowered the spare (a dinky donut spare of course, cheep car manufactures). As I started to change the tire I noticed that it had a large hole in it. It went from mid-side-wall to mid-side-wall a large rock or poor condition cattle guard or both had torn the tire to heck. I was just getting ready to put the tire with the hole in it back up under the back when…

I noticed that the other rear tire was completely flat as well. It seems that the little bit of added pressure from the car being jacked up had caused the valve stem to fail and the tire to empty. So there would be no driving slowly on the spare back to Wilcox to get a new tire to replace the one we had… So what does one do in this modern age in the middle of nowhere and two flat tires? I fired up the cell phone, while asking myself… “wonder if I can get service out here” and thanks to Alltel I did! I called Tim, hoping that he was still behind us.

“I have two flat tires”

he: “What?”

“I have two flat tires and one is totally shredded.”

he: “Really?”

“Yes, we’ll figure out the plan when you get here, where you at?”

“circle k in Wilcox” (it’s on the way and about 1 hour away.

So of course at this point we have some lunch and it starts to rain again… So when they get there, they take the two girls up to the campsite and Tim sets up his ezy-up and a tarp and leaves the girls with most of the contents of his truck and races back to get the rest of us. (did I say it was raining…) So on his way back to get Alison, Taylor (10 month old baby) and I he takes a wrong turn and gets 10 miles down the wrong road toward Portal NM. before realizing and turning around and getting the rest of us. We toss the tent in the back with some other tarps and clothes for the girls (they were in shorts and t-shirts with Stephanie and Nicole, to get the girls in Tim’s truck we took out S and N’s clothes bags to make room) and back up the winding road we went to the campsite. It is still raining…

After Tim and I got the tents up and some tarps over the cooking area we headed back down the road to get the rest of the stuff. It was too late go drive into Wilcox to get new tires at this point. On the way down the road we were stopped by a tree that had fallen across the road from all the rain. So after moving it as far off the road as we could we inched passed and got to the Pilot. Putting some chock stones under the tires and locking the doors were were going back up the hill. Going around some new rock fall (did I say it was raining) we got to camp and started dinner and settled in. Tim discovered that his new Tent was leaking, Alison and I’s air mattress wasn’t really holding air very well, but we were getting warm food and the girls were being real troopers and starting to enjoy the adventure…

Getting a fire started, eating some smores and making the best of it, then going to bed. Walking back to the tent one could see a couple of little starts peeking out from the ‘breaking’ clouds…. So about an hour later we started to hear the rain pummeling the tent (I swear the rain drops sounded like they were the size of baseballs) enjoying the flash of lightning and the roar of mountain thunder. Taylor slept… the girls slept… Alison slept… I listened, thinking of the road… the tires… and wondering how the road would be the next day…

We woke and it was raining… After Tim and I got some coffee and something to eat into us we got in the truck and headed down the road. We moved that tree a little further over to the side and moved some rocks as we went but other then a lot of running water the road was in good shape. Getting to the Pilot we put a large block of wood under the hitch jacked it up and got the other tire off and tossed the two in the back of Tim’s truck. We lowered the Pilot until it was resting partially on the block and partially on the jack and we were off, slowly. More down trees, some road like greasy peanut butter and then we were on pavement heading to Wilcox. Oh and we were almost out of gas. We did make it back to town and pulled into the Goodyear shop as the orange light indicating low fuel came on, thank goodness. Rolling the tire in and we gave the man the specs of the tire 235/70 r16… “humm don’t have any new ones that size, might have some used ones…” oh crap! it turned out he did and they were basically new… “these are off of Rick’s wife vehicle, they were too noisy for her, I’ll give em to you for…” Ok now what, how much, could he tell my willingness to pay what ever… “$40 each installed on the rims and new valve stems” I was tempted to say “ok I’ll give you 39.99 and a penny for the install” but didn’t have the sense of humor at this point to pull it off…

So fueled (truck with gas, Tim and I with some 7-11, the same 7-11, coffee) and off we headed back down the pavement to head back into the mountains. Heading back there were new places where water was crossing the road, the paved part of the road now, and one place where we squealed tires to stop when a telephone pole was rolling across the road. The guy at the tire place said that they had gotten hit by rain that at times was coming down almost an inch an hour, more then they had had in years (and we were camping in it)

Rolling back up the winding dirt road, more water crossing in places and the rain finally letting up to a fine drizzle. We finally got back to the truck and started to change the tires… when the Pilot began to fall off the Jack slowly… with the new tire part way on it stopped as it rested on the partially on tire. Tim raced to get the jack from his truck and rapidly jacked up the back from out large block to the trailer hitch. From this point we changed the tires, reloaded the spare underneath and then slowly worked our way back up to camp…

We all decided that retreat was the better part of the adventure and packed up, in the drizzle and went back down the mountain… slowly…

Getting home later we discovered that all the washes were flowing strongly and that there had been record rain while we were gone… while we were gone, we had record rain camping as well…

Photos

ps. about 2 weeks ago I was looking at my tires thinking, man I’m going to need new tires soon, next service I’ll look into that… Moral: if you think you might need new tires and you are going somewhere remote… get NEW TIRES