Trailer Tribulations and Weekend Fun!

Last weekend was Memorial Day weekend.  Scott and I celebrated by getting away for a 4 day camping trip in our trailer (we really don’t do any other type these days… though that could change!)

I had never travelled to North East Iowa.  And that is definitely my loss!  We drove up to McGregor, Iowa, home to Pikes Peak State Park.  And very nearby is Effigy Mounds National Monument.  Effigy Mounds was our true destination.  There are 200 burial and ceremonial mounds on this site, some in the shape of bears, others like eagles in flight.  Still others are conical, or other geometric shapes.  In this part of Iowa, and in surrounding areas of Wisconsin and Minnesota are literally thousands of mounds.  I never realized the extent to which these mounds are scattered around the country, particularly along and east of the Mississippi.  They number in the 10s of thousands!  So many have been lost, plowed under to make way for our farms and our cities.

It rained a lot while we were there.  On the first day, as Scott and I lay on our bed, Scott exclaimed “Oh oh!  Look at that!”  I followed his gaze to the vent.  “Oh C%$#!” I had to add.  In the ceiling of our trailer are three vents that we can open with a little crank to let air in, or smoke & heat out.  The one in the bathroom has a little fan to assist.  Well, anyhow, the vent cover in the bedroom had all but disintegrated, there were so many holes in it.  April and May were hard months here in Council Bluffs and Omaha.  Lots of hail storms!  The hail had taken out the vent covers of all three vents!  But the one over the vent was far worse than the others.  I knew what we would have to do on our return home!

The next day I was out walking around the trailer and came across Scott standing and looking up at the wall of the trailer on the front drivers side.  There was a huge bulge.  That can’t be good.  Something ELSE to do on our return home!

Other than those two little events, though, the weekend was fun!  I even cooked dinner one night, a RARE treat for Scott… except my cooking is rarely a treat for anyone!  I had come across a recipe for Paella, and I must say, I done good!  Quite tasty!

Monday, Memorial Day, we got started relatively early… by 9 a.m.  The weather was predicted to be windy.  And boy, was it ever!  It’s a 6 to 6.5 hour drive from McGregor to Council Bluffs.  But not MOnday.  Monday, it took us over 9 hours to get home!  The wind meant we drove with BOTH hands on the wheel, knuckles white and locked tight.  My arms were rigid to the point I thought I’d been lifting weights by the time I got home!

But that wasn’t the worst of it!  The wind worked its way in to the camper through that bulge I mentioned earlier… and peeled the siding away from the camper.  It happened as we drove south on I35, head on in to the wind!  Fortunately, a stop in Ames for a ladder, duct tape, a hammer and a screw driver put things in order long enough to trudge home.  We normally can drive 65 when pulling the trailer, but Monday we were generally driving between 40 and 50!

And of course, I came home to a ton of work, so we haven’t had a chance to get the siding looked at.  But today, Scott and I went down to the trailer, climbed up on the roof to see about fixing those three vents.  To our chagrin, it turns out that EVERY protuberance on the roof of our trailer has damage!  In addition to the 3 vents I mentioned there are 4 other vents… one is the vent stack for the gray water tank (where water from the kitchen sink or the bathtub goes)  one for the black water tank (that’s where the toilet refuse is held) and two that provide ventilation to the area between the ceiling and the roof, an area bout 3 inches thick…. Sort of like an attic, I guess.  All destroyed.  There’s a cover over the air conditioner and it is damaged.  And lastly there is the dome over the bathtub, a skylight of sorts.  All the plastic was brittle… kind of the consistency of a cookie.  Just touching it all made it crumble even more.  The skylight was fine, no cracks… until I touched it!  We got most of it all repaired today. 

And, talking to the guy at Camping World, it turns out we can expect to do this about every 3 years for as long as we own our trailer… there’s really not a lot we can do to prevent it!

The worst news is, based on what Mr. Camping World Manager told us, we could easily be done with camping for the season, as it only take a day to do the siding repairs, but it could take up to 4 months to get the new siding from the manufacturer… and no, the warranty expired last year.

And that, dear friends, is the story of our camping trip.

There isn’t a lot of news here, other than the trip.  Tomorrow is my birthday!  Yay!  And this coming week, I FINALLY will be undergoing the testing necessary to determine if I have narcolepsy!  In an odd way I hope I do!  (Its something we can actually treat!)

See you all on down the road!