NEW SALEM NORTH DAKOTA
It started pouring rain as we were driving east on highway 94. We were making good time and headed for one of our favorite campsites further west, but as we passed through Bismarck we started feeling like something was pulling on our trailer. It was like a yank. A hard yank. Or like the truck had hiccups.
Was this the transmission or was this something with our trailer?
We pulled off the highway at the nearest exit and into a gas station to take a look. And it was raining real hard by now. Right about then we looked around and said, “ Hey, I think we’ve been here before. I think there’s a campground down that road.” Sure enough! There was the New Salem North Park Campgrounds.
It’s a small campground where you need to fill out your paperwork and put your payment into an envelope. On this day absolutely everything was soaking wet, but I was able to contact the caretaker Rob and he came down. I told him about our predicament and he was very cool with it. “I’ll make sure no one else requests this site in case you need extra days.”
John had unhooked the trailer by this point leaving me and the pets at the site while he drove back into Bismarck to run the truck through some tests at a dealer. He was quite confident in the reputation of our truck’s transmission, but we were eliminating possibilities. And we were fully stocked on supplies with tanks in good condition, so we were happy to stay put and figure this out.
Once John got the all-clear from the dealer he went and purchased some replacement parts for the trailer brake plug and came back to camp. By now the rain stopped. He took the old plug apart and laughed as he revealed its guts. “I think this might be the problem”.
John figured the rain got the plug wet and it was shorting out and activating the brakes on the trailer as we were going down the road. But it wasn’t raining anymore so we would have to wait and see to know for sure.
Turns out he was right.
The next morning we enjoyed breakfast at a little place down the road and got stuck in a little ‘traffic’ on our way out of town, but I will be forever thankful and grateful to Rob and New Salem, North Dakota!
