After Grandma’s Birthday Party it was finally time to head WEST! When we first bought the camper, we thought we would spend a little time on the East Coast and then start driving towards Seattle by the middle of July. Well, we got a little behind and things kept popping up on our calendar, so we decided to scrap the Pacific Northwest plan and head to Colorado, Utah and San Diego. Our plans between Pennsylvania and Utah included stopping to see friends in Cincinnati, OH, Bloomington, IN and Aurora, CO.

We set off towards Ohio and decided to make a pit stop in Pittsburgh to see my sister Lizze and park in her driveway. When we were on the highway, Natalie kept mentioning that something didn’t sound right. We also felt it was a lot harder to accelerate and could barely get past 60mph. An hour outside of Pittsburgh we stopped for gas on the PA Turnpike. I pulled a little Louisville Slugger bat out and pushed on each of the rear tires to find one was really flat. We moved the camper over to the air fill and I added air for 5 minutes, but the tire never inflated. Luckily, we have Good Samaritan Roadside Assistance. After a few phone calls a service truck was on the way to help me change the tire. I didn’t have any of the right sized tools and have never changed a dually back tire. It took about an hour for the service company to show up and another 45 minutes to change the tire and replace it with the spare. When we pulled the flat tire off it had a three inch slit down the sidewall. We called Lizze to tell her we’d be in late.

The next day we went to Goodyear in Pittsburgh and got two new tires on the front and replaced our spare because it was dry rotted. Now Astraea Mobile has good tires all around to get us cross country, and a good spare that we can roll on forever if we get another flat. Lucky for us, Lizze got the day off to help us around Pittsburgh so we got to hang out and have another fun day with her.

With good tires we rolled west towards Cincinnati, Ohio to see our friends Mitch and Anjuli and their new baby, Mark. It was nice to kick back in their awesome back yard and grill out after a hard day’s drive.

Our next stop was at Lake Monroe Jellystone Park in Indiana. We stopped there to camp with our friends from San Diego, Darren and Erin and their kids. They recently moved back home to Indiana. It was cool to camp out with them on their shakedown weekend in their new (to them) trailer. Jellystone is a resort park with activities for the kids, a bounce pillow, pools and an awesome splash park.

We got underway from Jellystone headed to Joe’s Kansas City BBQ. We wanted to arrive in time for dinner, but due to the slow travel speed of Astraea Mobile we arrived at 9:30 pm – about a half hour before closing time.

The next big stop was my buddy Jeff’s in Colorado. The trip took quite a while, but we weren’t limited to going 60 anymore. Sometimes our downhill speed exceeded 70mph! Jeff lives out on the prairie in his 5th wheel camper in Elizabeth, CO. We just hung out and had a good time around the mile high city.