What Next?

Camping is supposed to be adventurous. We've certainly had our share of adventures on this trip. On the way to Ohio, somewhere in Indiana one of the tires came apart. I think the technical term is "delaminated". No matter what you call it, we had to wait about an hour for AAA to send someone out to put the spare on. But it prompted us to give the tires a closer look (mind you, we had checked them before we left Texas and they looked fine). We noticed that two more of them were looking questionable and wanting to avoid further problems or delays we started looking for tire stores on our route. We finally found one that had four tires the right size, but they were 8-ply instead of 4-ply and would cost twice as much. But that was okay because they should last twice as long. The stops delayed us by a couple of hours but we made it to our target destination for the night.

Then when we arrived at Findley State Park in Ohio (a lovely park, by the way) we hooked everything up and noticed that water was pouring out of the connection. (We'd spent a night in St. Louis and nothing like that had happened.) Of course it was late on Friday and we had our family gathering on Saturday so nothing could be done until Monday. We just had to keep turning the water off unless we were doing dishes or showering. If we left it on, it just spewed water all over the ground. (My fear was that it was spewing water somewhere in the camper that we couldn't see.)  We sent a message to a Camping World in Akron and made an appointment for Tuesday afternoon. It turns out that the connection for the hot water had come loose. That explained the really dodgy shower on Monday. It took all day to fix it, so instead of getting on the road for South Dakota, we went back to Findley for the night, visited a bit with family and headed out the next morning.

We finally arrived in Kennebec, South Dakota. I was concerned because the bathroom door was sticking and there seemed to be a soft spot near the door to the outside. Thankfully, leveling seemed to fix those problems. Mark was filling the water tank for the trip to Rapid City. I was inside the camper and I heard a "thud".

"What the hell was that?"

"I don't know."

Well, you have to investigate a noise like that. Turns out it was the water tank splitting and dumping all the water on the ground. We took delivery of this camper in June of 2015. The water tank just split. What on earth???

No worries. Mark can fix it with a fiberglass repair kit. We don't drink the water in the tank, we only shower and wash dishes with it. Although I don't think a fiberglass repair affects the integrity of the water. (Still better than what they've got in Flint!)

When we arrived in Rapid City we missed the turn for the KOA. We had to go an extra block and turn around. Now here's the thing - as we turned into the drive (uphill) the leaf spring suspension arm that attaches to the chassis of the RV broke. This is serious, folks. Thank God we were travelling at a speed of 2 mph instead of 70 mph. But it was Saturday and nothing could be done until Monday, We thought it was fortunate that there was a body shop at the bottom of the hill by the entrance. When Monday arrived, we went down the hill to the body shop only to find that they didn't do that type of repair. However, they did recommend a couple of welding shops. And thank God Mark is an engineer. He'd already assessed the damage, taken photographs and designed the fix. The folks at Professional Metal Works were so fabulous! They got it all fixed on Monday so that last night, we were able to sleep in our own bed!

In the meantime, I phoned the manufacturer of our camper. We've taken it to Ohio twice, Florida twice, Colorado twice, and Arkansas once. It's not that old. We don't go off road. We drive on Interstate and State highways. The chassis is splitting in half??? I was

starting to rehearse the litany of everything that has ever gone wrong with this unit from the day I brought it home and dozens of things jarred loose and I had to take it back to the dealer to repair those things and the service manager kept telling me what an awful day he had. (I didn't care.!!)

The manufacturer sent the info on to the company that manufactured the chassis. I am in contact with them and they tell me that they are going to cover this. We'll see. They also told me they were going to talk to the people who were doing the repair and I know that they didn't. They've assured me that they will reimburse me for the cost of this. I think they probably owe me a bit more. Two of the week-old tires are now completely ruined and we lost yet another day waiting on repairs.

On the positive side - it could have been far worse. We could have been traveling at a high rate of speed when it broke. We could have been in the middle of nowhere instead of in Rapid City. My guardian angel (as always) was working overtime.