Farewell to Marsh Country; Hello to Macon

On Friday we bade farewell to Georgia's marsh country, and headed inland to Macon.  The 243-mile trip was to be an easy one--travel north on I95 to Savannah, then travel west on I16 all the way to Macon.  Make one rest stop about 80-90 miles into the trip, and one lunch stop 100 more miles down the road.  We would arrive in Macon around 2:00 pm with lots of daylight to set up before relaxing with a cold one--all following the operating mode we've used thus far.  Well, best-laid plans and all that 'stuff'.

Our drive on I95 was very pleasant--nice smooth road, average traffic.  We exited to I16, and began looking for a place for our first rest stop.  Suddenly, the decision on where to stop was made for us.  At mile marker 139 on I16, no more than 25 miles west of the center of Savannah, there was a mighty THUMP followed by the truck's strong desire to go left while the RV continued to go straight.  After wrestling the truck & RV to a stop on the shoulder of the road, we discovered that the tread on our truck's left rear tire had bid the tire goodbye.

It damaged the fender of the truck, but at least that was the extent of it.  Very scarey, to say the least, and certainly not in our game plan, but not to worry.  We had enrolled in Good Sam's Emergency Road Service for this very reason.  We made the call and was assured that someone would be there to help us in 55 minutes.  When we hung up, it was 11:10 am.  We had rather hoped that since we were practically still in Savannah, the response time would be quicker, but OK.  So we'll just combine the scheduled rest stop with the lunch stop, and we should still be in Macon in plenty of time.  Let's have our sandwiches and be thankful that the damage was not worse, that the weather is still very nice (thunderstorms are expected for later today, but we'll be out of here way before that), and that we have the basic comforts of home right here (bathroom and refrigerator).

After an hour and a half, we called Good Sam to find out why no one had arrived yet.  We were told that they had just found out that the service they had dispatched to us had just informed them that we were not in their service area--someone else would have to be dispatched.  Good Sam apologized, and said they would look into another resource that would be able to send service, and would get back to us.  Did I mention that we were only 25 miles from the very center of Savannah?  How hard should it be to find a service?  Anyway, we were stuck so we waited...and waited...and waited.  Long story that is filled with lots of phone calls, lots of apologies from Good Sam, and lots of frustration and irritation.  The short version is that we sat at mile marker 139 on I16 for 5 hours before we were able to continue our trip to Macon.  We arrived at our RV site at 7:00 pm, very tired and not wanting to go through that again.  Good Sam will be hearing from us.

At least the park here in Macon is really nice.  The scenery is gorgeous, the site is great (concrete, very long, very wide), and the atmosphere is very peaceful.

We're pretty sure we're going to enjoy spending a week here even if we hated the trip.