Now I really can’t breathe!

We were on the road by about 1 pm for our trip from 100 Mile House to Jasper.  We were planning to find a nice spot for the evening and enjoy the afternoon enjoying some of this fabulous landscape.  The Highway out of 100 Mile House, Hwy 5 goes along some beautiful lakes and is a very nice highway.  We stopped many times along the way just to enjoy the views.  Just after lunch we reach a summit and see a sign stating that we are going to be descending a 9% grade over the next 10 km, trucks 8 km per H!  Allright, now we are really going to test the transmission as we descend.  Things are going fine although keeping the RV at 8 km which is about 6 mph seemed unnecessary as we were being passed at 15 mph, but it just keeps going down and it was pretty straight down without many curves.  There was a runaway hill pretty often and then that moment you dread when you are in a big RV, towing a car, burning brakes!

I tell Paul “the brakes are smoking”

He says “those aren’t ares!”

“Yes, they are, I can see the smoke!”

“Fine, I stop and check”  and thankfully he did and there was a runaway ramp right there because as he pulls over to stop he realizes his brakes are almost gone!  We were very lucky as we were going pretty slowly and he was able to get us stopped safely!  The brakes were smoking and it smelled awful, and we were only 1/2 way down this grade!

We sat on the side of the road for 1 1/2 hours waiting for the brakes to cool.  Then we unhitched the car and Paul tested the brakes in the runaway zone before he headed down the rest of the grade while Duke and I followed in the car!

I thank god that Paul listened to me, that I smelled smoke at that moment because if we had missed that pull out there was not another, and the transmission didn’t decide to stop working on the grade!  We made it the rest of the way with the hazard lights on and going less than 6 mph!

Were we sat and relaxed after that little episode

Were we sat and relaxed after that little episode

We found this nice reststop after and enjoyed the calm for awhile before we continued to our evening stop.  We were hoping for a nice spot near the river but only found a tiny little RV Park run by a cute couple living in their school bus near the river!  Some days are better than others!

 

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