About an hour and a half outside Vegas Regina decided she was done with her back left tire and it exploded as well, yay! Luckily we were somehow, once again, within just a few miles of a tiny town in the middle of absolutely no where. We called the only tire shop in the 1,000 person town of Beatty, Nevada and they miraculously had two new Goodyears in the size we needed. This is significant as some of the larger towns we were in, for instance, Reno, had ZERO tires in our size at multiple shops. We got EXTREMELY lucky.
We got towed into town, six miles, for $220. The tow trucker driver was the slowest person I’ve ever met and also talked to us about Jesus and asked if we were saved, lovely. Like two hours later after he finished taking an eternity to load Regina on and off the truck and fill out a ridiculous amount of paperwork we arrived at “Revert’s 24 Hour Tire Shop” which was not actually 24-hour so I’m not sure what was up with that, but the VERY nice gentleman there replaced our back two tires. We decided to replace the back right one as well at this time as it was a used tire with a patch in it (from another time when my tire exploded in Shreveport!) and we had no faith in our tires at all at this point.
We made it about two miles down the road to Subway and I could feel the front right tire shaking the car and beginning to separate. GREAT!!!! So we turned around and went back and he took it off and ran it and yup, it was about to separate. You’ll remember he only had two new tires in our size so we asked when he would be able to get more tires shipped in and the answer to that was – ONE WEEK! GREAT! The next town, Tonopah, was 94 miles away and we wouldn’t make it that far. He went to looking at his discarded tires and found a used Yokohama tire that was in decent shape, so he put that one on for us.
We took off towards the absolutely desolate Nevada desert living on a prayer that we’d make it to Reno where we could get our final tire replaced. Also, I should note, we had the car and tires inspected before we left New Orleans and they assured us the tires were in great shape and wouldn’t need to be replaced for another 10k – 15k miles! I had intended to replace them all before we left but after the guy at KIA ON THE WESTBANK (so don’t go there!) basically told me I’d be an idiot to replace them, we decided against it. Needless to say they will be hearing from me. Anyway, I wish Jesus could have taken the wheel, but we were all on our own.
The only cool thing we passed in the otherwise worthless Nevada dessert, Walker Lake. It was beautiful, but apparently full of crazy ass spiders.
In our hotel room in Reno! It only cost us $24 for two nights thanks, once again, to Total Rewards! We were absolutely ECSTATIC to have made it the 330 painstaking miles from Beatty to Reno going 60 miles per hour the entire way. We had some very mediocre Mexican food and went to bed, thankful to be alive and not dead on the side of the road in the middle of no where.
Reno was decent. We had Hash House a Go Go the next morning for breakfast and it was BOMB!!!! Highly recommend if you’re ever in Vegas or Reno. We then went to the arcade and I played a knock off version of Dance Dance Revolution while Garrett shot some deer and won some Spongebob tattoos. I forgot to mention in our Dallas post but I rekindled my love for DDR at Main Event and did pretty damn good on one of the harder modes playing Afronova. Yay DDR!! Anyway, we did a bit of gambling, ate more Pizza Hut because PIZZA HUT, and left the next morning for Sacramento, CA. Obviously, we had to nix our plans to go to Yosemite after the tire debacle of 2015 v.2 but we stayed at a great campground in Sacramento so it all worked out.
Hi California!
California has been absolutely amazing so far! Updates on Point Reyes and Van Damme State Park to come. We’re finishing up our coffee at a sweet pizza / coffee shop combo place named Frankie’s right now then heading towards Redwoods! xoxo Steph
Garrett & Stephanie 