Day 19: Louisiana bound

Friday equals travel day and travel day means we got to sleep in today! Now by "sleep in" I mean we got up at 6 a.m. instead of 4:15, but I'll take it! We had packed up all of the equipment yesterday, so we just loaded our luggage and hit the road for Louisiana! We forgot to stop on our way into Alabama last week for a picture with the state sign, but we got out for both state signs today!

The trailer always leads the caravan. I don't like the way the truck rides with the trailer hitched, so I usually travel in the second car. When we were just about to Baton Rouge, we saw the trailer bounce a little, then we saw smoke and smelt burning rubber. Sure enough, about 30 seconds later, we see the tire roll away and into the left hand lane where an 18-wheeler has to swerve into our lane to miss the tire. It was a scary few moments not only because the trailor had a flat, but also because the 18-wheeler almost slammed into the truck I was in and the run away tire almost caused an accident. Thankfully, we were right in front of an exit and were able to pull off and the tire made it's way to the side of the road. The good news is that we were trains on how to change the trailer tires and Landon, one of my teammates, had done it before. We had to unload a few tents from the trailer to get to the spare tire, but even still we got the tire changed in about 20 minutes and still had time to eat lunch before we had to get back on the road. 

Our poor tire!

We made it to Louisiana around 2 p.m., went to the golf course, set up HQ, met our host families and went to dinner. I was a little nervous about staying with a host family, but Ann and Brian seem really nice! Bridget is staying in the same house which helps for keeping up conversation. We even got a bowl of snacks in each of our rooms! So cute! The best news is that I don't have to go into HQ until 10 a.m. tomorrow! Time to catch up on my sleep!