On our way from New Orleans to the Great Smoky Mountains we drove through Alabama and stopped in Birmingham for a week. Around 40 miles outside of New Orleans we had a tire explode on the fifth-wheel driver/road side.
Surprisingly our TPMS (Tire Pressure Monitoring System) did not alert us until after it blew. This system measures the tire pressure and temperature and lets us know when anything is dangerously high or low. When the tire blew we were near an exit that had a wide shoulder so we pulled off and put on the spare. Lucky for us we had spent some time this winter dealing with a different tire issue on the fifth-wheel that required us to get the special equipment required to change our tire. This included a torque wrench, an extended bit for the lug nut, and a driver drill. Plus we had to learn where the spare tire was and how to get access to it. And of course, we learned how to change the tire, using the star pattern to remove the lug nuts and the specific torque our lug nuts needed to be at when we put them back on. Learning all this during the winter on the property meant we were prepared when we had to do it on the side of the road with traffic zooming past us.
We were nervous the rest of the drive up to Birmingham because both tires on that side of the fifth wheel were in a similar state. They were probably original to the vehicle and we had been told they both needed to be replaced soon but we were hoping to wait until we got our new suspension system at MORryde. We made it to Birmingham without the other tire blowing but contacted a tire place that could help us replace both tires with new ones. We took the other old tire off (leaving the spare on) and took the blown and old tires to a tire place where they replaced both tire treads and balanced them for us. We took both new tires back and replaced them on the fifth wheel ourselves. We also had to fix the area above the tire that got damaged when the tire exploded. Lucky for us the explosion didn’t blow through any wires, just the bottom plastic membrane and insulation that protected the bottom of the kitchen slideout (you can see that mess in that first photo).
We didn’t have much weekend time to explore but we did fit in a hike in Red Mountain Park that ended at an abandoned mine. It was hot, humid, and neither of us would recommend doing this hike in summer. I mean, it was May 30, so technically not quite summer, but it certainly felt like it.
We stayed at a community center RV park that had a lot of outdoor baseball fields, an indoor climbing area, several indoor basketball courts and an indoor track. We were excited by the climbing offerings until we saw them. There were maybe seven climbing structures all clearly geared towards kids and I’m sure it would be a fantastic place to take your kids for a birthday or special event but it was not a place I wanted to climb. We did spend some time walking around the track since it was air conditioned and a nice place for our daily walk.
Apart from getting our tires replaced and fixing the blowout section, this was a relatively calm and uneventful stay halfway between New Orleans and the Smoky Mountains. After our week here we headed to Pigeon Forge, just outside the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.