More problems we can't escape from (HW/BW Challenge Series)

We spent three nights living in the land of magnificent sunsets.

We were happy to have clear skies for a few days, but springtime is a season of extremes, and soon more storms caught up to us. They did, however, bring the most spectacular sunset of them all.

The final stretch was upon us, and that meant booking the last few overnights to complete our Harvest Hosts/Boondockers Welcome challenge. We had some flexibility in our route because we were on the tri-state border of Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. Our final destination would be northern Indiana, but we had a few options on how to get there. We had already overnighted in both Kentucky and Indiana during this challenge, so Ohio would complete the trifecta, and also make 5 states total for the challenge. We found a Harvest Host right over the OH-IN border on I-70.

Today's Harvest, New Paris, OH

A beautiful farm store that sells produce in-season, along with local gifts and flower arrangements made on site, Today's Harvest is exactly the type of place we like to visit when we're in a new area. The season was still too early for the produce, but the store had other enticing options, like ice cream and homemade donuts. We might be sugar addicted by this point. Outside was a cute little train and tractor-themed playground, and behind it a covered picnic area. The store even has a drive-thru for ordering the sweets. We parked in a level spot in the gravel parking lot, near the playground. We will say, it was by far the quietest train we have ever camped near!

We went inside to browse the gift items and order some ice cream.

Then we settled in for our weekly Wednesday night calls, which meant we couldn't explore the rest of the property until sundown. That was totally fine with us though, because that meant the store was closed and Tanner would be the only child on the playground!

We purposely waited until first thing in the morning to buy donuts because they're made fresh daily. Some of them were still warm!

We took our time before leaving, having our donut breakfast, getting work done, and...

...removing a busted bracket from our fresh tank.

Surprise! Just another item to add to our growing list of things breaking during our challenge. As I was spotting Anthony backing into our spot at Today's Harvest, I noticed something hanging down below our trailer frame. When I looked, I saw that one of our fresh tank brackets had come unbolted, losing two bolts on the same side, and leaving the rest dangling dangerously close to the road.

If this sounds familiar, that's because it's repeated history. At the beginning of the year, we needed to divert over to our dealer in North Carolina to get a different fresh tank bracket replaced, which had two bolts loose as well. One bolt totally came out and the hole was stripped too much to replace it. The other bolt hung on by a literal thread. We got that bracket replaced with a new one, which the service guys shifted down a few inches so they could drill new holes.

This time, we had two holes too wide to replace the bolts, and so our only choice was to remove the bracket altogether. We were down to only about 20 gallons in our fresh tank, so 3 out of 4 brackets should hold it just fine. That was it, though. No more filling for us until we could get the trailer to ATC. Thank goodness this didn't happen at the beginning of our challenge, because that would have been game over. We would have somehow needed to fill just before arriving to every location, and fill only enough to get us through that one night. It would have been extremely cumbersome, and we're sure we would have just given up and gone to a campground with water hookups. (In case you are curious, only 4 of the 19 locations we stayed at during this challenge had water available).

If you're thinking that there is something wrong with how our fresh tank is secured, we are right there with you. We have put our investigative hats on, collecting all of the clues, and forming some theories. But, speaking of collecting clues, it was time to head out from Today's Harvest and make our way to our next location.

Escape Muncie, Muncie, IN

Up until now, we had mostly been staying at the more "quintessential" Harvest Hosts – wineries, breweries, restaurants, and farms – but Harvest Hosts has some unique gems. As we made our way back into Indiana and headed north, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to RV at an escape room! When we booked our overnight, we were instructed to schedule an escape room timeslot ahead of time, and so we booked our time for the evening after our arrival.

Escape Muncie shares a parking lot with a few other businesses, but the lot is one of the smaller we've stayed at. We arrived before they opened, so we parked our rig according to the instructions, next to their mobile escape room. This was the first time we were on the losing side of the Harvest Hosts rig size game. Each host lists the maximum length RV they can accommodate, and even though Harvest Hosts states that this should be "combined length," most people list the max just for the rig itself. This means that, with our 28ft trailer, we could technically fit into a lot of "35 and under" spots, but combined we're 56ft, and according to Harvest Hosts, we should therefore only aim for the "Over 45" category. Escape Muncie was listed as "Up to 45ft," which we have done many times before.

We knew based on the photos that we might need to unhitch, and even though we were very close and probably could have gotten away with it, we didn't want to stick out at all, and so we ended up unhitching and parking the truck next to the trailer. We still had plenty of space, and it's possible that we could have parked in a different area of the lot if someone was there to ask, but the escape room only opens for appointments. It did make us question if we need to take the Harvest Hosts' definition of rig size more seriously, though. In fact, somewhere between booking our last "Up to 45" location and this one, Harvest Hosts had added a warning on the booking page that we were over the length limit. They still allowed me to put in the request, but the warning itself was a new feature.

The warning made me think twice, but at the same time, we know our rig, we were cool with unhitching, and we saw photos of bigger rigs in the listing. I'm glad that Harvest Hosts doesn't restrict booking over the length limit, because this would deplete our options greatly. We're always in a tough position because our trailer is not actually large, but with our 6ft tongue and truck, the feet add up quickly. I've also mentioned the added obstacles of ensuring we can make turns and maneuver. Sometimes the length is fine, but getting into the spot, or even driving to the location, is the limiting factor. Even worse, sometimes the hosts don't think about this. They look at the parking spot, measure it out, and assume the length that can fit there. This is why we always do our due diligence, checking photos, reviews, satellite maps, and street view. In this case, we believe Escape Muncie estimated the length of their mobile truck and decided that to be the accepted rig length. It's a good strategy, but they are honestly one of the only hosts we've ever seen that actually follows Harvest Hosts' rule to measure combined length. We understand why most hosts don't, because those of us with towables can unhitch if needed. However, we're sure many RVers won't want to if they're only staying somewhere for one night. This is where the RVer must do their due diligence, but also decide what's more important, going somewhere they really want, or going somewhere more convenient.

For the challenge, we stuck only with locations that listed "Up to 45ft" or "Over 45ft." We didn't risk anything smaller. However, as you can see, the "Up to 45ft" must be taken with a grain of salt. Besides Escape Muncie, these are the locations that are part of that category:

McKelvey Vineyards:

Starview Vineyards:

Iron Saddle Ranch:

All of these locations could easily say they accept rigs over 45ft if they wanted to, though I do think McKelvey Vineyards has designated their limit correctly, given that each parking option is so different and larger rigs might have difficulty in some of them, due to unlevelness and tight maneuvering.

Despite this parking spot being smaller, most of the lot around us was empty, and we had a little patch of grass behind us, which Tanner was happy about. The spot was also reasonably level.

Anthony's and my history with escape rooms is less than ideal. Before this, I had only participated in one, along with Anthony and a couple of our friends. However, instead of letting us play among ourselves, the staff insisted that we team up with another group. Unfortunately, our new teammates did not have the best reasoning skills, but even worse, part way through our session, the staff discovered that they had accidentally forgotten to put one of the clues back in the room! We had been stuck on that clue for over 20 minutes before they realized the error, but after rectifying it, they only added 10 minutes back on our clock. We ended up losing, did not have fun, and honestly should have asked for a refund or a free pass to come back another time. Anthony had done one other escape room, in a large group with coworkers from his last job. 10 people who aren't strangers has been a recipe for success, and as a result, he has a victory in his pocket.

But ever since my one and only experience, I have wanted to redeem myself. I hoped that this was my chance. We booked the "moderate" difficulty room because there were only two of us, and that is a disadvantage simply because you can't have multiple people finding clues at the same time. Even so, we felt confident going in, admittedly even a little cocky.

Now we can't give any secrets of the classroom away, but let's just say we were humbled by the experience. On paper, Anthony and I should make a great team. I excel at details, remembering, and intuition. Anthony has a lot of trivia-based knowledge. This time though, we couldn't quite get our act together. The biggest time suck was when Anthony missed an important part of a clue, and my mistake was not double checking it to see what it said. We were also just plain rusty. Neither of us had done an escape room in years, and on the second-to-last day of the Harvest Hosts challenge, we were utterly exhausted.

And so we lost, but we will give credit where it's due. We only had a few clues left to solve. It always stings being that close, though. So alas, I have yet to redeem myself from my first escape room. Perhaps this is my sign to never play one again. Or perhaps to play more so I can get the strategies down. Tricky. Well then, let this be our invite to all of you, dear readers. If you ever want to join me and Anthony for a rigorous escape, we could very much use a few more teammates. Don't let this failure fool you. We're actually mostly smart!

Beyond just being tired from our challenge, we had more reasons for our brains to be functioning at suboptimal levels. We had just dealt with our fresh tank bracket situation the day before, and then we got to Escape Muncie only to be faced with another problem. Needing to unhitch turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because as soon as we released our hitch ball from the coupler, we noticed that our hitch was loose. Like, really loose.

Before we went in for our escape room session, we spent over two hours figuring out what to do. First, we needed to find out if the hitch was even safe to continue using. Then we needed to do the best we could to tighten any components we could. Anthony made sure all the bolts were secure, and only found one that was a little loose. Most of the wobbling was coming from the hitch receiver on the truck. For the non-towers out there, the hitch is supposed to have some give. This is so the forces during travel won't break anything. The hitch needs to move with the flow of the trailer. However, our hitch was wobbling at least 50% more than it should.

Anthony got on the phone with eTrailer to ask their expert opinion on the root of the problem, as well as whether or not we could keep towing with the hitch. Can we just pause for a moment and give the biggest shout-out to eTrailer? We love them. Go buy things from them (not sponsored). Then we proceeded to do all the research possible, and we concluded that our hitch pin was likely wearing away area around it, making the hole bigger. The bigger the hole gets, the more the hitch wobbles. We also answered a lot of valuable questions:
1. Is it still safe to use? Yes.
2. Is this normal? No. It's been known to happen, but not after less than 30,000 miles of towing.
3. Are there fixes? Sort of. eTrailer recommended a hitch clamp, which we actually had a long time ago but returned it because we realized we didn't need it. Hmm. There are a few other makeshift solutions that people have come up with, but the surefire fix is to replace the receiver.

So if it's not normal for the miles we've towed, how did it happen? Once again, we put on our investigative hats, collected the clues, and formed a theory. That poor hitch has been through some things. First, it was installed wrong by our dealer when we first got the rig. Then, our RV driving school instructor tried to fix it, but only fixed part of the problem, temporarily. We then proceeded to launch into full-time life with an incorrectly installed hitch, which we towed with for a year and three months. Not including the four months before full-timing, when we were mostly stationary but still towed sporadically. It wasn't until May of last year that we got the hitch aligned properly – at least as far as we can tell. But all that towing while misaligned could surely cause that pin to rub against the metal, gradually wearing it down. We had our running theory and would need to decide on a solution, but we now had many sources claiming we could continue towing for the time being.

We were ending this challenge with a busted transfer switch, a broken fresh tank bracket, and now a wobbly hitch. With just one more Harvest Host overnight to go, we were more than ready to mark this mission accomplished and head to ATC for our repairs. But we couldn't celebrate our victory yet. Something big was sitting in our way.