Long day. . .

We left Jamestown, North Dakota, this morning headed for Fargo about 94 miles down the road. We have been having an issue with "tire thump" and Terry had examined our one front tire and found it to be flat spotted and cupped on the edges. In addition, it felt quite uneven when you passed your hand over it. My greatest concern was a blowout. The tire is only 18 months old. We changed both front tires in April 2009 when we had a front end alignment. There was plenty of tread on the tire, but it still was thumping pretty good.

Yesterday Terry called around because there aren't many large cities in North Dakota and he wanted to see if there was a tire store where we could get it checked. He found one at Fargo. . . Fargo Tire. He called and they said they could work on it whenever we got there. Damien was very helpful when we got there and looked the tire over pretty good. He said it was damaged from being out of alignment. I am puzzled by this because last year when we had the work done, it was definitely hard to drive with the wheel jerking all the time. Now the wheel isn't doing that but I seem to be able to feel vibration in the accelerator. But he said that was the problem and the tire was ruined. We could have put it on the back and he said it would actually smooth out, but we opted not to do that at this time. They had a matching tire they put on and then it went to the alignment bay. The guy was working on a vehicle, but was to start on the motorhome right after lunch and it would take two hours. So by 3 p.m., we should be ready to roll.

We got Neal and took off in the truck. We drove through downtown Fargo which is a pretty hoppin' town. They do have some shopping centers out on the west side, but the downtown is pretty much alive. They even had a theater which was showing movies. We took Neal to Petco and put him in a cart and walked around for awhile looking for the new treats he really likes. They didn't have any, so we went to Petsmart. They didn't have the exact ones, but we got some similar. We also checked out a city park we had thought about camping at. It's a good thing we checked it out. It was a very nice park and we let Neal out to "do his business," but it would have been hard for us to get in there. They didn't have their trees trimmed back very well.

We arrived back at the tire store around 2:30 and had to wait about an hour. But the alignment guy said the coach was out by about one inch, which is bad. They thought perhaps we didn't get a good alignment last year. That was done at a Freightliner shop, but who knows? The only thing is that we had tire and wheel issues that had to be taken care of AFTER the alignment, so maybe those things affected the accuracy of the process. At any rate, we were out of there by 3:30 and rolling down the road. The coach drives nicely and I no longer feel the vibration in the accelerator pedal. The guy did tell me that while the tire was riding very rough, it would not have blown out from that problem. That is good to know because that was my greatest fear. I do know what to do--I have watched the Michelin Man's movie several times, but I still don't want to have that experience if I can help it.

Even though we spent 5 hours there, we are still on schedule. Well, we don't really have a schedule, but Terry had planned on staying tonight at the Shooting Star Casino in Mahnomen, Minnesota, and we did get here. We had to play musical sites to find 50A big enough for us, but we finally got settled.

Later we went over to the casino and I have to say we are both winners! I won $32 and Terry one $16. Not bad and we had fun doing it!

Till next time. . .

Dale