OK, so the upshot is that during our trip from Fort Kamath to Burns, both in Oregon, our truck broke down. Or more precisely, we stopped to eat lunch and go to the bathroom at a safe roadside pull-over, and when we were ready to leave again, the engine cranked but did not start. We have had this issue in the past.
It could have been a problem because we had zero cell phone signal, and there was hardly any traffic on the road we were on (we were just finishing traversing the Oregon High Desert, and driven roads that had nowhere to pull over during 3 hours – we could have literally blocked the traveling lane if this happened earlier).
We both stayed calm, and acted methodically. First I pulled out our Starlink dish, plugged it on the RV inverter which runs off our battery bank, and now we had the ability to search the internet for “towing service near me”, and make calls from our cell phones, via wifi calling.
There literally was nothing between our current location and Burns, Oregon where we had our campground reservation for the night. Luckily for us, the tow service we found is based in Burns, which was still 61 miles away. So we had roughly 90 minutes of further planning time before the tow truck arrived. By then we had contacted our campground to let them know we would need to stay a few extra nights (repair shops are typically closed Saturday afternoons and Sundays), identified that there is a Ford dealer in town (we think its the same problem that we had last year – so it is possibly warranty work), and drafted a plan of what made most sense to drop in order to get back on track at a future booked stop with as few reservation changes as possible.
We got to our campground safely 3 hours later than planned, but still during daylight and before dinner time, which reinforces that planning travel segments not exceeding 4 hours is the right thing to do.
