Through my journey over the last three years as a full-time RVer, my biggest mistake came within the first three months on our first vacation. I don’t really blame myself because the mistake was probably unavoidable without experiencing it first. Regardless, the event was pretty devastating and was an iconic event for my two stepsons that still tease me to this day about my reaction.
On our way from northern Georgia to Fort Morgan, Alabama, Joey, my husband, needed to take a break and pull the camper over for a quick pit stop. We had made a few more stops that day with relative ease considering it was our first time navigating the roads with our monster 42 foot fifth wheel. Nothing unusual happened at the stop, but when we got back on the road, after only about 5 miles later, Joey looked out the window and noticed that smoke was coming from our trailer tires. We quickly pulled over and my heart raced as I started to have flash backs of when I witnessed a bus my Soldiers were riding caught fire and burnt to a skeleton in just a few minutes. Joey ran around the camper trying to find the spot where the smoke was coming from as I reached for the fire extinguisher. Thank goodness it looked like there were no big flames.
When Joey crawled under the trailer he saw that the breaks where radiating red and the wires under the carriage were smoking. I looked up and saw that there was even a little smoke coming from the trailer hitch in the back of our tailgate too. We knew that something was seriously wrong, so I started research roadside RV assistance. It was a Friday afternoon and most RV repair shops were closing. I could not get anyone on the phone, but I thought we could just detach the truck and go get help. It would suck to leave the camper just sitting by the road, but we had no choice.
Well, plan B was not going to work either. The hydraulics jacks would not come down so that we could dislodge the truck. I really began to despair by this point.
Here we were sitting only 30 miles from our first beach vacation in my first major buy of a $92,00 RV, and we were died alongside the road.
It was really hot and I was getting more and more frustrated as semi-trucks wiped by honking and shaking the camper and rattling my nerves.
I have to confess; my husband truly saved the day with his next idea. Still level headed, he called a guy he know that owned a camper repair shop back home, and he told Joey how to manually override the break system in the trailer so we could pull it to repair shop. It worked! And even more remarkably lucky, there was a repair shop a few miles up from where we were and they could get us in that afternoon and work on it immediately! Yes, score!
Despite a few complaints from the boys of when we were going to get to the beach, our time at the repair shop went incredibly smoothly. We were in the repair shop only a few hours and they found the problem and said they can patch it for at least the remainder of our trip. The safety pin that attaches the trailer to the truck had been pulled out, probably when we had made that final pit stop and had to jackknife out of the parking lot. When this particular pin is pulled, it engages the breaks in the trailer. Worse yet it had started an electric fire in the wires, which explains the smoke in the trailer hitch. The repair shop said they needed only an hour and they already had the parts they needed. All is well that ends well right? Well not just yet!
When we pulled our camper to our spot for the week at Fort Morgan RV Park and we could be free to run to the beach to close out the long day, again our jacks were having trouble coming down and they were moving unusually slow. At first we thought it was the sand and they were having trouble settling in or getting a grip; but when I went inside to try to open the slides, nothing. They wouldn’t budge. And that was the time I just gave up. I went into the truck where there was AC, called my mom, and cried a little. Joey continued to work on the camper with the boys but later he and my youngest stepson approached my window and as I rolled it down, they looked at me with concern and I cried my iconic line, “I just wanted us all to have a good time! Joey pass me a beer!” My stepson has never let me live this down. Soon, all but Joey gave up and headed to the beach, not really knowing where we were going to sleep.
But where there is a will there is a way. Joey again was our saving grace. He was able to manually push the slides out by stretching his body across the camper to force it open. (He tells the story really well if you ever caught him in person. It’s pretty funny actually.) Amazing! When we returned, everything was up and running! What a swell guy!
In sum, what had happened is the electric fire had drained all our hydraulic fluid that operated the hydraulic slides and break system! We had to get a mobile repairman to fix it while we had our vacation and then we would have to take it into the shop to completely redo the wiring under the carriage when we got home. Thank goodness our insurance covered all of this, as the damage measured in the $10,000 range! Luckily, the rest of the vacation went splendidly or otherwise, it could have become the vacation from hell! The morale of the story, watch out for the safety pin on your trailer hitch or this too can happen to you!
~Lesley
