Staff photo by Fritz Busch The dashboard of Bob Dittrich’s recreational vehicle was heavily damaged after the engine caught fire Wednesday afternoon. Dittrich escaped injury, stopping and exiting the vehicle after he drove down Broadway, towards the 7th North Street intersection.

NEW ULM — Bob Dittrich of New Ulm was about to put his recreational vehicle into winter storage shortly before 10 a.m. Wednesday morning when a mechanical issue interrupted his brief drive.

“It backfired, I pulled over and could smell something. I opened the hood and saw the engine was on fire,” Dittrich said as a wrecker towed away his 32-foot RV just south of the Broadway and 7th Street North intersection.

Dittrich got away from the vehicle before New Ulm Police and Fire Departments arrived to control traffic and extinguish the fire that burned the dashboard and front seats.

Bob’s wife Pat was following in another vehicle. She talked about her feelings after the RV caught fire.

“There were tears in my eyes,” Pat said. “We traveled to many states and Canadian provinces in it.”

What trips does she remember as being the most beautiful? There were a number of those.

“I remember putting it on a ferry in Puget Sound, a Pacific Ocean inlet in the Pacific Northwest, located along the northwest coast of Washington state,” said Pat.

“We visited Vancouver Island (part of the Canadian province of British Columbia), the largest island on the west coasts of the Americas),” she added.

Some of her other favorite RV trips included Glacier National Park, which includes more than a million acres of glacial-made mountain peaks and valleys, long waterfalls and a road that crests the Continental Divide.

An east coast trip was another one of her favorites.

“We drove it to Washington, D.C. and had brunch at The Watergate Hotel,” Pat said.

The hotel known for political scandal on June 17, 1972, when five burglars were caught in the Democratic National Committee headquarters, which led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation.

The hotel is also known for being pet friendly, welcoming dogs and cats and any other domestic pets as long as they weigh less than 50 pounds.

Fritz Busch can be emailed at fbusch@nujournal.com.