Frankly Savannah, You Don't Have to be so Dramatic!

I haven't quite finished telling the the story about our Savannah trip.  This makes me feel like a high-pressure salesman:  "But wait!  There's more!"

Monday morning we weren't feeling any special rush to get back home.  Our goal is to get home by dark.  I finally remembered to snap a couple photos of our enormous campsite.  If you look close you can see the baby moons we finally coaxed onto our rims:

Skidaway Island State Park, site 68

As we were breaking camp the girls played outside.    Samuel was looking at a travel book we previously failed to consult for Savannah activities.  He found a very interesting sounding "Streamliner Diner" in the book.  How could we go to a city with a restored 1938 diner and not visit?  We took down our awning and got in queue at the epic Labor Day dumpstation line. 

With six rigs in front of us, we decided to park and grab a geocache/go for a 2 mile hike at the park instead of waiting.

After the hike we hit the dump station again... only third in line. We had the...let me think of appropriate word...opportunity to watch someone de-winterize a rig as we waited our turn. 

Across town, the Streamline Diner wasn't looking very "open."  

  We had to pull into the parking lot and check it out though.

Boy did we ever get to check out that parking lot!  As we pulled into the diner Brian hit a curb, bent a rim, and deflated one of our tires.  No sweat!  (Ok, not really "no sweat" since the temperature was hovering around 90.)  We got jacks and the spare and got to work.

While we (I use this term so loosely, like I actually had anything to do with the work) were changing the tire, two business men with keys arrived and went inside the diner.  After "we" finished with our tire and found the hand cleaner we followed the men into the diner.  Nope.  They weren't open.  We did learn that the diner was changing hands and would be open for business in about a week.  Sucks.  Just missed it.  Glad we got a little peek at the inside!

About 10-15 minutes later we started heading home, west on I-16.  We almost made it to exit 4 when we had a blowout on the other side of the trailer!

What to do?  Our spare was already on the trailer!  We left the trailer on jacks and took our two messed-up rims in search of tire shops open on Labor Day.  (Just one note here:  If you have a tire shop or are thinking of opening one then let me offer you a word of advice.  People TRAVEL on Labor Day.  If you're open, you'll get all the business.)  I lost count of all of the tire places we tried.  The open ones sometimes had tires but no rims.  Neither of our rims were viable.  I was soon eyeing the one of the "rims for rent" places that we always seem to see near military bases.  Brian just looked at me and laughed.  No rims to be found on Labor Day.

Perhaps all this Savannah civil war history has gone to my head.  I couldn't help but feel like a Gone With The Wind character when we were unsuccessful at the third open tire shop.  I fretted "But! But! But our Airstream will be stuck at the side of the road if we can't find me some rims!" 

This is when Brian graciously and calmly realized that the problem wasn't being stuck in Savannah but having to endure another sleepless night with our baby at the side of a busy road.  We made our way back to the trailer, hitched up, reattached the rim from the blow-out tire and crawled down the road at a whopping 10 miles an hour to the next (thankfully very close) exit. Such a relief to find and an industrial area with the perfect quiet spot for the night!  

Well, it was mostly quiet.  We did have had three different people stop to see if we needed help; there is something to be said here about the kindness of strangers!

Siting in the trailer in the evening: for the first time on any trip ever I found some time to write about the trip while on said trip.  I also got to play the role of Scarlet, as I sat by the side of the road in a trailer on jacks  "La de da!  I shall worry about rims tomorrow!"

In the morning our tire and rim set were ready as promised.  

Thankfully, we made it home without need of another spare.  

(Which we didn't have.)

Our new baby moons fixed up just fine.  You like 'em?