You better stop, children. What's that sound? Everybody look what's goin' down.

Click the picture to see a slide show of our trip from Santa Fe to Durango.

Jill: "Do you hear something?"
Tom: "Yes. What do you think that is?"
Jill: "I don't know. Do you think we should pull over?"
Tom: "Yeah. I think we'd better. I'll just pull in in front of this gas station."

Tom pulls the coach over on a large paved area in front of a gas station about 14 miles south of Chama, NM, which is about 14 miles from nowhere. He gets out and walks around the coach, looking under and up, trying to find something that would make a metallic sound. Nothing.

He continues back to walk around the toad. About this time, Jill comes out and asks, "Did you find anything?"
Tom: "Yeah. The right rear tire on the toad is gone."
Jill: "Gone?"
Tom: "Gone! It must have had a puncture and got low on air and just blown out."

Looking at the right rear wheel, we found a ring of rubber around the wheel, and the edges of the rim were scuffed up from rolling on pavement. There was a little damage to the fender liner, but it was very minor. Ironically, we had seen a pickup we were following have a blowout some miles back, and I told Jill, "That's why I check the tire pressure on Sadie every day before we hit the road."

I got the spare out and the jack. There was a weird looking part in with the jack tools, which of course, I had never looked at before, so I got out the owner's manual to see what it was. About that time a grandfather/father/son trio, who had stopped for gas, came over to offer help. The father said he had a floor jack and insisted on using it, instead of that "piece of junk they sell you with the car."

Before I knew it, he had the tire changed and the jack back in his truck. We thanked him profusely and wished him safe travels. He did the same, and we got back on the road. Our rescuer had told us that in Chama there is a Chevron station that sells tires. We drove around Chama for a few minutes, looking for the Chevron station, and then decided to go to the tourist information center that Jill had seen as we entered the town. As we approached it, we could see the Chevron station, so we bypassed the TIC.

The owner of the station could not have been nicer. He first said he was out of the size tire we needed, but then he came back and said his employee had found one. Inside of 15 minutes, the new tire was mounted, balanced and replaced on the car. We again thanked our second rescuer profusely and hit the road for Pagosa Springs, CO, some 47 miles distant. The worst of the damage was that we lost the wheel cover. Nevertheless, we felt blessed that the damage was not worse and that no one was hurt.

We crossed the state line into Colorado a little while later. The landscape had changed a great deal from our beloved Santa Fe. It was equally as beautiful, in a completely different way. We continued on to Durango, where we are parked in a beautiful grove of aspens, nestled in a valley. I will post some pix of the park tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy the pix that Jill took along the way today. I think you will notice the gradual change in terrain.

Incidentally, Sadie did just fine, even though we changed altitude from 7,000 feet to 5,600 to 7,800 to 8,100 and finally settled in Durango at 6,500. Veronica, not so much.