Made it to FL

We left NH on Thursday morning REAL early and made it to Virginia. The next day, we made it to the FL GA line, then the third day, 4 hours to our final destination which is Lakeland.
The only hiccup was a blowout on the trailer around 75 miles north of the SC/GA line. If any of you have travelled I-95 south, the roads are terrible in SC. As soon as we crossed into SC from NC, it was thump, thump, thump and thump. It was 2 thumps for every second.
It was that way for around 40 miles or so. We were doing 60 MPH and wanted to get into the passing lane but they were going 80/85 at least so I know it would have eventually caused an accident. That passing lane was much smoother. I think some of the belts on the side wall internally may have broken. When it happened we just heard a bang and a slight bump. Not knowing what it was because I didn't see anything in the road. Then my TPMS went off about 5 seconds later. Looking at the tire, there is a large piece of sidewall, about the size of a softball peeled open. I think the tire may have developed a leak in the side wall and it created a huge bubble then when it busted, that's what we heard and felt. Luckily we were able to pull off the road far enough to change it. It was on the passenger side.
This is the second time my TPMS has saved my butt. Paid for itself twice now. I would never be without it now and would highly recommend it to everyone.

Welcome back Rene and Lucille. Sorry about the tire, but I am glad you made it ok. Just in time for winter weather. I finally turned on my electric blanket a few nights ago. It is getting down into the 60s at night.

    You seem to have made it just in time with another tropical system working its way up the east coast over the next couple of days.  We are still sunny and 70's here, but it is supposed to cool off this week.
    See you in Florida and thanks for checking in.

Ed

SeilerBird said:

Welcome back Rene and Lucille. Sorry about the tire, but I am glad you made it ok. Just in time for winter weather. I finally turned on my electric blanket a few nights ago. It is getting down into the 60s at night.

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Thanks Tom. 60's at night is nice. We keep a couple of windows open at that temperature for sure. Little breezy today though for that.  We do have the door open.

Hfx_Cdn said:

    You seem to have made it just in time with another tropical system working its way up the east coast over the next couple of days.  We are still sunny and 70's here, but it is supposed to cool off this week.
    See you in Florida and thanks for checking in.

Ed

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Yes it poured here late yesterday from the storm which may reach you.  We had plenty of time to set up before it started.

    It may hit New Brunswick, but we are just supposed to get a few showers and light wind.

Ed

Hi Rene,

Rene T said:

This is the second time my TPMS has saved my butt. Paid for itself twice now. I would never be without it now and would highly recommend it to everyone.

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Glad you didn't suffer any injury, nor major loss besides the tire itself.

Can you please share with us what brand/model TPMS you have?

Cheers,
--
  Vall.

VallAndMo said:

Hi Rene,
Glad you didn't suffer any injury, nor major loss besides the tire itself.
Can you please share with us what brand/model TPMS you have?
Cheers,
--
  Vall.

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TireTraker  Model TT-400C

Good for you Rene,

I so wish I could leave for FL in Oct. but I'm 2 weeks out at the soonest and probably more like 4-5 weeks before I get there.

I so know what you mean about traveling in the right hand lane which is super rough and the left lane is smooth but we don't
travel as fast as 99% of the cars and even some semi truck drivers so we have to stay put.
Sometimes it's so bad that I almost think it would be worth getting a ticket and travel in the left lane.
Anyone that went around me in the right lane would immediately know why we are in the left lane.
Although cars don't get bounced around any where near as much as a house traveling down the road.
I would claim I thought I saw orange cones - or there should be because that lane needs work and it should be illegal to drive on it.

Lucky for me I won't be on I95 when I come to FL.

One more thing you said you heard a pop - did you still not think or know you had a blow out until you looked at the TireTraker?

Rene, please don't use up all the warm while you're down there. We won't get to FL until the second week of January and would appreciate some when we get there! We'll be starting with a stop at Ft Clinch SP and then drifting down to Midway Campground on the Tamiami Trail in March, with several other stops in between, mostly at state parks.

RedandSilver said:

One more thing you said you heard a pop - did you still not think or know you had a blow out until you looked at the TireTraker?

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It wasn't a pop. It was more like a bump like I may have run over something. Then the alarm went off.  The side of the road is loaded with tire remnants.  You can't go 8' without seeing pieces of tires.  They appear to be working on the road but they're only working at night which is good. I'm thinking they're making all the repairs in the concrete road with concrete then they may go aver it with a grinding machine to flatten it out.  It won't come soon enough. If I only had some other way to get around this area of I-95 without going 300 miles out of my way, I would do it. 

Personally I would go 300 miles out of my way rather than screw up my tires and suspension.

Good timing on the bug out, Rene. We had almost 6 inches of rain and 50+ MPH winds overnight.

HappyWanderer said:

Good timing on the bug out, Rene. We had almost 6 inches of rain and 50+ MPH winds overnight.

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Yes J we did leave at a good time. We did get quite a bit of rain from that storm the night we arrived here in FL. Lost power at my house at 1:00 AM this morning. Still not on yet. Luckily, I have a standby generator.

Welcome back to Florida!

NY_Dutch said:

Rene, please don't use up all the warm while you're down there. We won't get to FL until the second week of January and would appreciate some when we get there! We'll be starting with a stop at Ft Clinch SP and then drifting down to Midway Campground on the Tamiami Trail in March, with several other stops in between, mostly at state parks.

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I just put in a request to extend the heat till after you get here. No promises though.  ;D   It's suppose to be in the mid 80's for at least the next week. I Love it.

Still don't have power restored back home in NH. Much of the state is still without power. My service provider has 525,000 customers and 113,000 are still without power as of this morning and I'm one of them. Thankfully, my house is running on a standby generator. I need it because I have a solar hot water system for my domestic hot water and I need power to keep a circulator pump running or else the system will fail from high heat.  I also have solar electric. That's just making the house meter run backwards while the power is out.
This link shows how much of the state is still affected by the outage.

https://www.eversource.com/psnh/outage/outagemap.aspx

Yep, I95 is always bad, from any aspect.  I quit using most interstates and especially 95. We mostly use the old US highways. We'll be on our way to Florida in a couple of weeks.

Rene T said:

I just put in a request to extend the heat till after you get here. No promises though.  ;D   It's suppose to be in the mid 80's for at least the next week. I Love it.

Still don't have power restored back home in NH. Much of the state is still without power. My service provider has 525,000 customers and 113,000 are still without power as of this morning and I'm one of them. Thankfully, my house is running on a standby generator. I need it because I have a solar hot water system for my domestic hot water and I need power to keep a circulator pump running or else the system will fail from high heat.  I also have solar electric. That's just making the house meter run backwards while the power is out.
This link shows how much of the state is still affected by the outage.

https://www.eversource.com/psnh/outage/outagemap.aspx

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We got lucky this time, Rene. We were in VT when the winds were just starting to pick up, and we made it to our base in NY before it got too bad. Our power here didn't so much as flicker, but our friend's farm where we were in VT has been out since early Monday morning. He has backup power as well though, both for the house and the barns.