Our plans already got derailed

On our first day of Season 3 of travels, we drove almost 380 miles from Massachusetts to Delaware. It's a much longer drive than we would typically take, but if you read our last blog post, you know that RV camping options in the Northeast are scarce, especially in wintertime. We have found it easiest to do a full drive day with every hour of daylight we have, so that we can reach the greater Philadelphia area in one swoop.

The drive was, all things considered, smooth and uneventful. We succeeded in getting to our site at Lums Pond State Park before sunset – though just barely. We had already been to this park once before, and we reserved the site adjacent to the one where we stayed last year, so we at least knew, daylight or not, we would have an easy site to maneuver into.

Well, that's what we thought, at least. When I got out of the truck to spot Anthony as he backed in, I heard this terrible metal-on-metal scraping and creaking sound. Immediately I knew it was coming from one of the trailer axles because it got worse every time the axles rotated. This realization was incredibly frustrating because our axles were replaced last May and they were supposed to be well-rated and heavy duty.

Because the sun was setting quickly, we decided to wait until the next morning to climb under the trailer. We had survived our 375 miles, so hopefully we wouldn't find anything too dangerous or debilitating.

The next morning, our diagnostics commenced.

At first glance, Anthony saw nothing wrong, but I kept insisting that the problem was with or around the axles. Then, he saw it. One of the bolts securing one of our fresh tank brackets was missing, and the one next to it was loose. This was causing the bracket to sag and rub against the axle. Honestly, it was a much better scenario than we had feared. Our axles were doing just fine, and we could just run to the hardware store and get a replacement bolt, which Anthony did later that day.

We soon realized that this wouldn't be a quick fix. When Anthony went to tighten bolt #1 and replace bolt #2, he discovered that the reason they weren't secure was because the holes had gotten too big. Anthony did what he could to tighten the bolts, but neither would stay tight. To add to the issue, Anthony needed to tighten the bolts by hand because our drill wouldn't fit. But, there was some good news. Anthony was able to tighten the bolts enough so that the bracket was no longer rubbing against the axle.

That good news didn't last. In order to secure the bracket in the first place, Anthony had emptied our fresh tank, and as soon as he started adding more water back in, the weight of the water pushed the bracket back down against the axle. Of course it would! Even just a few gallons of water weighs about 25lb!

We had to face the facts:

1. We had no way of fixing the bracket on our own. We couldn't use our drill, so we couldn't make new holes, and even if we could, technically drilling anything new into our trailer frame would void the warranty.
2. We would be traveling with this loose bracket for the foreseeable future, which meant we'd need to drive with our fresh tank completely empty. This means using jugs and water bottles during our pit stops, and needing to find a place to fill our tank once we arrived to our next campground because we wouldn't have hookups at our site.

What's worse was, we couldn't even contact ATC because it was New Year's weekend. We would have to wait until that coming Tuesday.

Reminding ourselves that it's more of a nuisance than a danger, we emptied our fresh tank once again before leaving Lums Pond, secured the bolts as tightly as possible, and gave ourselves extra time to find a central water spigot at our next campground – crossing our fingers that it would be turned on! Some campgrounds shut off water in the winter.

As Anthony pulled out of our campsite, I followed alongside the trailer for a bit, to see how loud the scraping sound was. Fortunately, it mostly subsided when Anthony drove on flat ground and was really only a problem on hills. I felt better knowing that we wouldn't be barreling down the interstate with metal slabs causing friction at 65mph.

We don't like to make a habit of traveling with a full fresh tank, but this would have been one of our exceptions. We weren't going far – just Delaware to Maryland – and we were going to a dry camping site. It would have been nice to be prepared ahead of time, but since that wasn't going to be the case, I pulled up the Greenbelt Campground map to see the locations of the central water spigots. When in doubt, we usually head towards the dump station because oftentimes there is a potable water spigot nearby. But, when we got to the campground, we saw that the campground loop containing the dump station was closed. We would need to find one of the central spigots in our loop. This meant possibly blocking the road while we filled, which is never fun.

We found the first spigot and got to filling. That fill lasted about 60 seconds. The spigot was leaking and therefore causing a very low water pressure. So we went to the next one. This one was in a good location because, on the chance someone did need to get by, they could use the vacant pull-thru site that was next to us. A rig may not have fit, but the one pickup truck that needed to get by was able to with room to spare.

We had trouble with this spigot too, because it was pump-style and the handle wasn't staying down. Anthony thought he might need to hold the handle the whole time in the cold, but by a stroke of luck and creativity, he found the perfect size rock and wedged it between the handle and spigot, which jerry-rigged it enough to keep the water flowing hands-free.

And with that, we were finally ready to celebrate New Year's Eve in our holly-lined site at Greenbelt Campground.

We had a couple of days to figure out the best-case scenario. At the end of the week, we'd be leaving Greenbelt and heading to North Carolina. We were initially planning on staying east, but the drive wouldn't be terribly far if we had to go west instead, towards our dealer, Trailers of the East Coast. The more we thought about our options, the more we feared that the trailer might need to actually be lifted in a service bay, because the space to work underneath was so cramped. This meant mobile techs would be out, and we'd need to either find a mechanic shop that works on large vehicles, or just head to the dealer. Because we know and trust Trailers of the East Coast, that would be our first choice. Only, we knew that a last-minute appointment might not be in the cards.

On Tuesday, we heard from ATC. Anthony had emailed them over the weekend, hoping that might get the ball rolling faster. They wanted to ship us a new bracket, but that meant we'd need to figure out where. We called Trailers of the East Coast and asked if there was any way we could get the bracket sent there and maybe get it installed sometime the next week, pretty please??? Because the job shouldn't take long, they agreed to squeeze us in on our preferred day, the following Monday, assuming of course that the bracket would arrive there on time.

The good thing about asking ATC to ship to Trailers of the East Coast is that shipments go down to them all the time. So they just threw the bracket in one of the RVs that was headed down there and said it was due to arrive Saturday. Meanwhile, our goal was to keep our travel plans as intact as possible. We'd leave Greenbelt Campground on Sunday 1/7 as planned. Instead of driving to our overnight in North Carolina, which would have been about 290mi to get southeast of Raleigh, we'd cancel that stay and drive as far as we could southwest towards Winston-Salem. Trailers of the East Coast wanted us there at 8am Monday, so we would stay somewhere where we could get up early and make the drive the rest of the way to Mocksville, NC. We opted to get a site with full hookups so we could be sufficiently replenished. We could use city water for the night and dump our tanks before servicing. We booked a site at the KOA in Greensboro, NC. On Sunday, we would drive 320 miles, and then on Monday, drive the remaining 56 miles.

Later in the week, we got a call from Trailers of the East Coast, letting us know that our bracket arrived a day early and they were all set for us to come on Monday. Now it was up to us to hit the pavement and make good time...

...but nature was looking like it had other plans.

To be continued.