Grand Canyon Round 2 + Tire Trouble

Before leaving Zion for the North Rim, I noticed that by inner rear tire on the driver's side was flat. I had noticed that the valve stem extension had come off that tire a few days earlier, I think it was knocked off during the mud flap incident. I thought I would just have to get a new valve extension and fill it back up. The problem was, it was nearly impossible to find the right valve extension. I went to NAPA and bought a straight line extension but it wouldn’t go on, so then I went to Goodyear to ask if they could help me but they didn’t have the right extension and told me the straight one wouldn’t work. I went back to NAPA to return the straight one and called O’Reilly, which also didn’t have the part. Then I went to Tractor Supply Co and came up dry again. There was a place called Nielson RV nearby, so I went there but they didn’t actually do service at that location.  I tried calling about 6 more places and finally found some no name store that had a flexible valve extension. Once I got it, I managed to put it on by wedging my hand between the rear tires.  Then I went to 7-11 and tried filling the tire up with air, but it was clearly leaking, so I had a feeling the valve stem itself was bad. At that point I went back to the Goodyear to ask for their help, and they took the wheels off for me and found out the inner valve stem was bad. They put a new one in with the new extension I had bought and it finally worked. The whole thing took about 3.5 hours to get figured out, which was extremely frustrating.

We finally started driving to the North Rim, and as we got close we passed through a managed fire. It was so strange because there was smoke and burnt trees everywhere so it felt like we were driving through a wasteland or something. Unfortunately after that I had some more trouble. About 30-40 miles from the park I started getting a weird vibration in the steering wheel and pedals at times. I stopped a few times to check tire pressures but couldn’t find anything that seemed wrong. I was getting anxious because we just kept getting farther from civilization, and I didn’t know what to do.

However, we made it to the North Rim and got some great views of the canyon. The North Rim was cooler, greener, and more peaceful than the South Rim. After spending some time near the lodge and visitor center we drove to the campsite and I checked everything I could on the RV but didn’t really find anything that weird. Suspension bolts and lug nuts seemed tight, tire pressures were fine, driveshafts were good, and front brakes weren’t stuck.

The next day Seth and I hiked into the Grand Canyon along the North Kaibab trail. It was a really pretty hike, and cool to get a perspective inside the canyon. We had to step out of the way of mule riders going back up. We hiked down about 2 miles and then turned around. It was very hot coming back up! After that I went to the lodge to make some phone calls, and found a repair shop that I could stop at on the way to Bryce to get the RV looked at. We relaxed for the rest of the day and unfortunately it was a full moon that night so we didn’t get a great view of the stars. However we walked to the rim to see the canyon lit up in the moonlight!