The Great Off Grid Ozark Adventure: part 13

Note: This content was written out long before it was published here on the blog. So although this post is being published in early 2025, it was written several months ago. If you’re just finding this post, I recommend starting with part one here to get more background.

So far in this journey I had learned about the importance of not allowing myself to stress out so much before a trip, how to repair/rebuild a trailer, and a lot about how to take-in apart and reassemble the intake manifold on my truck. The next part of the journey was an opportunity to learn about tires. Trailer tires in particular. I had replaced one tire, and purchased a spare. I left the other tires because they seemed ok. Now I know that if I’m hauling a heavy load, it is worth it to really pay attention to the age of the tires and make sure they are all good. Each tire was slightly different, and all of them were too old for such a journey. We had passed the place where the accident was, but were only about 40 minutes into the drive when a tire blew. Luckily, we had already exited the freeway and there was a perfect spot to pull off the road. I tried to jack the trailer up but it was too heavy for the jack that I had. Mary called her sister who lives nearby and they came to the rescue. They brought a jack but it was very slow work. We put on the spare, but I could hear air escaping from a tire on the other side. I knew it was only a matter of time before that one was toast as well. Of course, the kids got restless and needed to use the bathroom so Mary went to the nearest park with them while my son and I worked on the trailer.

Once we got the spare on, our goal was to try to get to Walmart which was about a 15 minute drive away. I honestly didn’t expect to make it since air was leaking out of the other tire so quickly. I was right, we only made it like 50 yards! Our brother and sister in law ended up taking that wheel and heading to walmart. Although the Walmart wasn’t too far away, it took some time for them to get there and wait for the tire to be mounted. Also, their jack worked better than ours but it was very slow. By the time they got back and we got it all put together it was dark. We knew we wouldn’t make it to New Mexico like we had hoped, but we thought maybe we could get to Kanab. However, at this point we had replaced all the tires except one (because one was replaced before we even left). We thought it would be best to just make sure that all the tires were the same and that they were good, reliable, new tires. We went as quickly as we could to Walmart and the auto center was just closing. They agreed to stay open and help us but then they found that their system was wrong and the tire size we needed was actually gone. We had already purchased the last one. Our sister/brother in law that had been so helpful and had taken the majority of their day to help us generously offered to let us stay at their place. We set up mats on the floor and stayed the night.

The next morning I had two main tasks that I had to take on. The first was milking the goats. This would be the first real attempt at milking in the animal trailer! I was nervous to be honest. Also, they live in a new neighborhood of duplexes, in the kind of place where I figured that nobody would expect goats and I had no idea how much noise they would make. You just never know with goats! To my surprise, they behaved very well and I was able to get them milked without any issues. In fact, they were surprisingly easy to take care of for the rest of the trip. They kind of went into a bit of a hibernation mode where they didn’t eat much and just laid down for the majority of the trip. Their milk production slowed down and is finally picking back up again.

We were pretty happy with how our animal trailer turned out. We removed the metal divider designed for horses, built out a loft area and put netting in so that the chickens could be there and the goats could be below. We installed a feed bin (not visible because the goats are in front of it) right below the side door of the trailer so we could feed the goats without having to open the main door and fight the goats to get them fed.

We also installed a water tank (top left) with nipples for the chickens to drink and a gravity fed, automatic waterer for the goats. The only issue with it was that I mounted it a little too low and they pooped in it.

The rest of the trip went without any major issues although it was difficult. Our first day started late because we had to wait for that last tire and we are slow. It was a little tense because we didn’t know what to expect and had had so many issues, but everything went well. We passed Page AZ and started heading east into very remote and desolate country. However, it was getting late and Mary was pretty tired so we decided to stop and go spend the night in Page. Northern Arizona went well and we had a short day getting to New Mexico where we stayed with Mary’s aunt, then a long day after that and we stayed in a tiny motel in a tiny town in OK and another long day after that where we had to push a little harder but we made it to Missouri! We were not to our destination quite yet though. We stayed that night with a friend who offered to put us up for the night on his homestead in the south west corner of Missouri. We got a late start the next day but we let the kids have some play time and we visited our friends for a while. Overall, the trip took quite a long time but we also had a lot of time to visit with friends and family along the way so in a way, it was really nice! We finally made it to our destination that night! We were all very very tired and ready to be somewhere a little more permanent! The house was dark, cold, and needed a good cleaning but it felt good to have a home base again. It didn’t yet feel like home, but we were super grateful to have a place to land until spring and very grateful to have made such a journey in once piece!

Make it stand out

Our kids got pretty used to sleeping in strange beds and random places! This was one of the hotel rooms we stayed in. There was only one place available and there were not nearly enough beds for our family but we had a safe place to stay the night.

Our friends had a large shop with a trampoline and wiggle cars. It was so good for our kids to have a break from the car and be able to get some wiggles out! I enjoyed some flips on the trampoline as well. :)

Our mothers were both very relieved to hear that we had arrived safely! My mom said something about how she feels like we were the unluckiest people ever. I told her that I felt the opposite. With everything that had happened, there was so much potential for things to be worse! I felt like we were so lucky that things turned out the way they did! And we are so lucky to have such a network of friends and family that looked out for us!

So now we are at the end of this part of our story. As this post gets published, I’m sitting at the computer in the house we are staying for winter. We haven’t made any progress on our own property but that is OK. We are honoring the winter season and just enjoying a slower life without having to rush things. We have done quite a few little jobs to improve the space and it feels a lot more like home. This series of posts are designed to give readers a background but I hope that you’ve enjoyed them and found some value in them.