The Great American Road Trip

Day 2: Breaking Down

So we headed out the next day (Friday, April 15th) with the intention of making it to Sioux Falls, SD that day. We drove through St. Louis, saw the Gateway Arch and a great view of the city from the highway. I was pleasantly surprised by how large the arch really is. About an hour west of St. Louis, the trailer begins to smoke. I call Josh and immediately he pulls over. To avoid being parked behind him on the very busy highway, I throw the Tacoma in to 4WD and drive up and over the hill on the shoulder of the road to get out of traffic and park down off of the frontage road. We call Penske and they tell us they are sending someone to change the tire. We wait 2 hrs and the guy shows up, only to find out that the bearings are shot and the wheel is totally broken off and sitting sideways. We wait another couple hours for someone to show up to fix it, only to find out it is completely unfix-able (especially on the side of the highway in traffic). So, they pull the tire off and escort Josh down the shoulder of the road to the next exit where they have a repair show. We then wait 5.5 hours more for them to bring us a new trailer. All in all, we spent about 9 hours off the road waiting. Once we got the new trailer at about 8pm, we decided to cancel all reservations ahead of us and push on to Kansas City, MO that night.