We started having problems with the truck, a 13-year-old Ford F350, in Wyoming when we’d taken it in to a local mechanic for some regular maintenance and he suggested the rear wheel bearings needed to be replaced and repacked. The job was botched, and we’d been forced to take the truck into three other mechanics along our route hoping for a fix. What should have been a relatively straightforward, couple hundred dollar job had turned into an almost $1200 headache that had me questioning whether we should just end the trip, sell everything to the highest bidder, and fly back to Colorado to start unpacking our storage unit and regular life.
We limp the truck and our 25-foot-long fifth wheel to a friend’s home near the banks of Lake Minnetonka. I unstrap Gus from his car seat as Mike crawls under the truck. He emerges a few minutes later smelling like brake fluid and grease. The axel is continuing to leak and it seems likely the smoke cloud was the product of oil dripping onto the hot brakes. We leave the trailer hitched to the truck and head toward cold beers, a few hours of much appreciated babysitting and reevaluation.