Never A Dull Moment!!

At the beginning of my last post I made the comment that it would likely be my last post from Florida, for the beginning of this post I am going to make the comment that I HOPE this is going to be my last post from South Dakota!!  So I figured I had better update just in case people start wondering where the heck I am, I promise I AM coming home and haven't just disappeared into the abyss (although that's what it feels like!).  So day one of the journey home began perfectly, we hit the road around 2 am and were cruising along fine, got through the agriculture inspection and crossed into Georgia, thinking life was good and we were making excellent time and then went to pull off to fuel up and bang the truck dies right in the middle of the exit ramp, I tried to turn it over several times and nothing, thankfully there was a gas station five minutes down the road so ran down and got one of the service guys to come up and he 'guaranteed' me that we had run out of fuel....now I'm looking at him skeptically because I never let the fuel guage go below a quarter tank but he assured me that was totally it (okay now I admit I'm no mechanic but I know what a fuel gauge looks like when it's empty:s) so he pumps some diesel in and says turn it over, of course nothing, then he messes around for what seems like an eternity, meanwhile people are screaming at us and honking for us to "move the truck".....right because I thought I would just park it in the middle of the exit and take a nap for a bit, sometimes you have to wonder what goes through people's minds!!  Finally he concludes that he can't fix it and we have to get it towed, now the good news in all of this is that McKenzie who was stabled at the barn with us in Florida was driving behind us with her trailer (we had decided to trailer both Nico and her horse Prinz in my trailer so that they had company to Tennessee so they were driving behind us with their empty two horse trailer) so we were able to get the trailer towed to the gas station and quickly off loaded the horses and reloaded them onto the other trailer (the one bright side to a crappy day!) so we got the truck towed in and they determined there was a problem with the pressure getting the fuel to the engine, they did some work on it and we were stuck in Georgia for the night, we had an interesting meal at a local buffet (O'Neils' Buffet to be exact and you're greeted at the door by O'Neil himself who assures you that it's the best chicken n' dumplins you'll ever have-needless to say there was not a normal sized person in this buffet;).  The next day we got back on the road around 1:00, made it to Atlanta just in time for rush hour and got in to Tennessee where Nico was about 10:00pm.  The next morning we got on the road around 7am heading out for Omaha, Nebraska, made great time in the morning, as we got past Saint Louis we stopped for fuel and pulled back on the highway just in time for it to be closed due to accident, we had to be rerouted off of the interstate and naturally the guy gave us directions that took us down all sorts of tiny side roads and twists and turns, finally we rerouted to the interstate and arrived in Omaha around 10:00 yesterday night.  We got up and hit the road this morning at 8am, heading out on our 'easy' day to Rapid City, South Dakota, making excellent time, as we pulled in to Rapid City (a full 45 mins ahead of schedule) I stopped to top up the fuel and noticed a nail in the back left tire of the truck....great......then I walked around to the other side of the truck and both the rear and front tires were completely stripped to bare......even better!  We had just enough time to rush Nico to the barn and get him settled for the evening before zipping in to Wal-Mart to see if we could get the tires replaced, as we pull in the battery light all of a sudden pops on as well.  So to make a long story short.....something in the alignment made the tires strip completely unevenly and NO ONE in Rapid City carries 19.5" tires so we are stuck waiting for new tires.....and......the alternator is in the process of crapping out on us so that will have to be fixed before we can hit the road, yikes!!!  Now the saddest part of the whole story.....I had the truck serviced last Friday before the big journey, a lot of good that did!!!  So all in all I really thought this road trip was worthy of having its own blog post as it's definitely one for the record books, so I am now on a forced holiday in South Dakota until Monday and hopefully will be back on the road as soon as possible!:p