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| Relaxing on the hammock when we finally made it to Florida in February |
We were on our way back from Montana, and Glacier National Park in September of 2024. We made it to Indiana, and a very bumpy part of I-70. In the side mirror I noticed that the camper seemed closer to the bedrails of the truck than I remembered! I watched it for awhile, until I was sure, before telling Mark. He said "that can't happen", but we pulled into a rest stop. He checked everything that he could see. Everything that was visible looked ok. He raised the hitch to the highest notch to give more clearance, and we continued down the road. We made it back to Newcomerstown with no further issues.
The next day he started investigating the area around the hitch. After he loosened part of the front panel, he found that the metal around the hitch box was cracking in 3 places, and the welds were breaking. How does metal crack we asked? That can't happen! That's the part of the camper that should be the strongest. It connects the camper to the truck while we're driving down the road. Once we saw the problem, we felt very fortunate that we didn't have a catastrophe while we were driving, and we knew that we couldn't move the camper again as it was.
Mark made many calls and asked a lot of questions to the camper manufacturer, the frame manufacturer, and the insurance agent (who said it was wear and tear, so not a covered expense). He contacted camper repair people, some helpful, and some not so helpful. Then we waited. Keystone, the camper manufacturer, said that they would pay for a temporary weld, so that we could get the camper to a licensed repair company. After that work was done by a great welder in the Newcomerstown area, we safely pulled the camper to Indiana and waited. It was such a major repair that the frame manufacturer (Lippert) had to do it. The good news: even though the camper was out of warranty, they covered it. Our camper frame was now better than new.
Unfortunately, our new camper roof that was put on in the spring was showing some wrinkles, most likely from some frame flexing from when the frame was cracked.
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| After we park we could see wrinkles |
The good news is that we did make it to Florida for February and March! But when we were ready to head south and pulled in our big slide, it made a whirring noise. The slide was all the way in and we could travel, so we just didn't open that slide on the trip down. We decided that it would be better to work on it in warm weather. Luckily Mark is very handy and was able to fix it himself when we got to our Florida campground. Then after that Mark found that we had water dripping from our underbelly! That can't happen! The water should be in the holding tanks! He cut a flap in the underbelly cover to see where the water was coming from and found that the gray water tank (the tank for the shower and sink water) had slid out of place! That can't happen! (He still has no idea how it did happen!) But again, being creative and handy, he was able to fix it!
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| Mark underneath the camper |
We enjoyed Florida, keeping busy, visiting friends, swimming, and working as little as possible. We worked 6 days out of our 2 months, for the restaurant where we worked the year before. We made it back to Ohio with no more issues.
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| The park in Inverness, Florida |
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| Line dancing class |
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| Visiting with Sue on Amelia Island |
Another great Florida "second summer"!
