It's Finally Happening!! (Day 1, Part 2)
After our 3 hour detour, courtesy of the Maine State Police, we were back on the road, and legal, at least in Maine, we think...
This being the first long trip with the house and truck, I thought it would be a good idea to stop fairly frequently along the way to check everything. We traveled about 25 miles south on I-95 to the Newport exit to get fuel at the truck stop there. As I pulled through the truck fueling station and got out, a trucker came over and told me that it sounded like one of my wheels was coming loose on the trailer. I didn't hear anything when pulling into the gas station, but that's not surprising given the amount of noise the diesel engine makes. As I was fueling the truck up, I checked the trailer, and sure enough, one of the wheels had started to vibrate it's lug nuts loose. This wasn't the first time a trailer wheel had started to vibrate loose on me, so I had kind of expected it to happen at some point. After fueling up, I pulled out of the fuel bay and off to the side of the truck stop, and tightened the loose wheel, and double checked the other three wheels. The other three were good!
With the fuel stop done, it was on to Clinton (exit 138) to drop off Shenee's grandfather's table saw and chop saw that I had borrowed to do all the work on the tiny house. We pulled off the exit and into the gas station there, and were immediately approached by a few people who wanted to talk about the house. After about 30 minutes, we finally had a lull in the sightseeing traffic and made a break for it to drop off the saw.
We spent 15 or 20 minutes with Shenee's mom and grandparents, offloaded the saws, and headed back to the gas station. After chatting with a few more people, we decided that Shenee would get a bit ahead of me with the car to stop and get some food, while I kept on moving. In the 50 or so miles on the highway, I found that the truck and trailer like to cruise right between 50 and 55 miles per hour, while the Subaru with the motorcycle trailer and canoe can maintain around 70mph. With Shenee ahead of me, my next stop was the Gray toll both, where I got out and checked the tires and hubs. Everything looked and felt fine. I paid my $3.50 toll (hooray for 4 axles) and continued on my way.
Shenee caught up with me just as I was going through the Portland toll. I stopped there again to check both vehicles. All good. At that point, it was around 6:30, and I didn't want to push our luck driving at night, so I called our planned stop in Merrimack to let them know we would be a day late, and called an old friend and roommate from college, Isagani, who lives in the seacoast region of New Hampshire. He said he would be happy to let us stay the night and would love to see the tiny house. With our revised location set up, we were back on the move!
We arrived at the farm that Isagani lives at around 8PM and backed the tiny house into the driveway, got an extension cord plugged into the house, and then went on a tour of the dairy farm. Their were quite a few baby cows and Shenee had a ball playing with all the animals. A few of Isagani's friends came over to look at the house. The older gentleman who owns the farm got a kick out of the Kia in the back of the dump truck. Before bed, Isagani and I made plans to get up around 7am to shuffle some weight around and get the truck/trailer combo under the 26,000lb limit.
Daily Stats:
Mileage: 203 miles
Travel Time: 7.75 hours
Fuel Cost: $45.16
Toll Cost: $22.50
Police Interactions: 1 @ $139
Loose Tires: 1
