The aggravating and unexpected start to Season 3

ALREADY?!?! Yes, that's correct. On our very first drive day of Season 3, we ended up with a broken part on our trailer that needed to get repaired as soon as possible. Two bolts holding up one of our fresh tank brackets were not remaining tight into the trailer frame, causing the bracket to sag and scrape against the axle underneath it. The situation could have been worse: We still had three other brackets holding our fresh tank up, so we weren't at risk of losing our tank; we'd much rather have it happen to our fresh tank and not one of our waste tanks; and we determined that, as long as the bracket was only lightly touching the axle, the axle wasn't in any danger. So, we kept our fresh tank empty as much as possible, especially on travel days, to keep the weight off the axle.

Immediately after New Year's, we hurried to get our trailer pros on the phone so we could figure out a game plan. From what we hear, the wait time for servicing – especially warranty work – for most RVs is weeks, even months. As ATC owners, this is one less hassle we need to deal with. Our pros jumped on helping us, and within just a couple of hours the Tuesday after New Year's, we had already placed the order for our new fresh tank bracket – covered under warranty – and scheduled a time to go to our dealer, Trailers of the East Coast, to get it installed. Trailers of the East Coast called ATC and requested that the bracket go out in the next shipment to them, which happened to be that same afternoon. Boom.

Then, the bracket that was supposed to arrive Saturday arrived a day early, on Friday. Trailers of the East Coast immediately called us to let us know. Boom.

On our end, we rearranged our travel plans to make our way southwest into North Carolina. It would entail a long drive day, followed by a very early morning to get to the dealer by 8AM Monday, but if all went as planned, we'd only need to switch one overnight, and we could still make our South Carolina state park reservation Monday afternoon. It would be a hustle, for sure, but we had the pros on our side.

We were ready to camp our week at Greenbelt Campground outside of DC. It was business-as-usual: Grocery shopping at Mom's Organic, grabbing dinner with our friends Roberto and David, and enjoying our nature retreat. Things seemed to be going smoothly...almost too smoothly.

Let's rewind for a minute and talk about one of the many, many dramatic thorns in the briar bush of our full-time launch in 2022. We were supposed to launch New Year's weekend of 2021. That didn't happen because we were not prepared physically or mentally, and our trailer was not prepared physically...and maybe mentally. But, something happened in early 2022 that made us wonder if our delayed departure was perhaps a blessing in disguise...

You think that looks bad? At least we were stationary! When this blizzard hit, it wreaked havoc on most of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Washington, DC got pummeled, and if we had launched on December 30 as planned, we would have been right in the thick of it. For two newbie RVers who did not have their towing proficiency yet, a blizzard would have been a terrible ordeal. We thanked our lucky stars that we were safe up in MA for a few more weeks, as we read stories of the horrendous road conditions in and around DC. Their infrastructure wasn't ready to handle that much snow in such a short period of time.

Back to present-day. We're hanging out at Greenbelt Campground and see in the weather forecast that New England is going to get pelted with some snow. As far as we could tell, we were below the snow-line and would likely just get rain, and so we didn't think much of it. Then one day, we were hunkering down getting work done, when we got a knock on our door. It was our camphost. He warned us that a "blizzard" was coming in on Saturday, and the last time they got a blizzard two years ago, all 3 of the RVs at the campground got trapped due to fallen trees, and one RV that tried to leave got literally stuck in the snow. Power lines went down and it took days for crews to clean up the campground. The camphost told us that, if we wanted, we could move down to the day-use parking lot during the storm, so we'd be closer to the park exit when we had to leave the next morning. He said the park police would be aware of this and wouldn't bother us. We thanked him for the advice, and when he left our campsite, our heads were spinning.

What forecast was he listening to? Every app and website we checked was not saying snow this far south. However, we did notice that meteorologists were not quite sure who was going to get the worst of it because the weather fronts kept shifting. We thought about our options. We couldn't leave early; we had work all week and dinner plans Friday night. If we got stuck and had to leave late, it wouldn't be the worst situation. We could make our travel day Monday instead of Sunday and tell Trailers of the East Coast that we couldn't arrive until Tuesday. Then we'd shorten our South Carolina stay by one day. That was enough to tell us that, no matter what the storm brought, we'd be enduring it right here at Greenbelt.

As the week wore on, we determined that snow was not going to be our issue. The bulk of the storm would be coming in on Saturday, when temperatures were supposed to reach 47°F. Our issue would be rain. Rain that could potentially lead to frozen roads if the temperatures got low enough that night. Rain that could soften the ground even more than it already was, and those trees were not trustworthy. We noticed all the downed trees immediately. That's why two of the three campground loops were closed. Parts of the hiking trails were closed due to "erosion." Then our camphost also mentioned the trees. We are no stranger to weak trees. We are also no stranger to soft soil.

Accompanying the rain would be strong winds. Forecasts were predicting gusts around 45mph. Not something we'd typically worry about, except those TREES. We didn't know if leaving our site would be an overreaction; past traumas can skew our fight-or-flight response. But we packed up on Friday, deciding that we would want to be ready to move at a moment's notice if we needed to.

Saturday morning brought sleet.

The sleet turned to rain, but very cold, almost freezing rain. It was clear that the atmosphere was still very cold.

The winds were going to pick up later in the day, around 4PM. That would be our deadline to decide whether or not to move, because we would want to hitch up before the wind and before dark. Tipping the scales in the direction of moving, the nightly low was oscillating around freezing: 33°F, then 32°F. We had to leave right after sun-up the next day, so there would be no time to wait for a thaw.

At 4PM, we made our command decision. It's easy to wonder back-and-forth if it's overkill, but once upon a time we didn't move and our neighbor did. We thought her choice was overkill. This was what her site turned into the day after she left.

No matter what, it's better to just err on the side of caution. We weighed the potential dangers, and there were more if we stayed in our campsite, both dangers to ourselves as well as risks to our ability to leave the next morning.

Hitching up was not fun. The rain was pouring and absolutely freezing. Parts of our site were already flooded up to our ankles. We went as quickly as possible, but we couldn't avoid getting soaked, and my Raynaud's was flaring up worse than it had in a long time.

We drove down to the day-use parking lot, circled around to be closest to the exit, and leveled ourselves as best we could while remaining hitched. Then we settled in, crossing our fingers that the trees nearest us would keep their integrity as the winds picked up. We also hoped that we wouldn't get a knock on our door that night. Without a legitimate blizzard, we assumed we were still allowed to park in the lot, but that would be up to the park police.

The night was noisy. Wind and rain battered our roof and sides. The raindrops themselves were massive, and at some point over the course of the night, they froze to our truck, making it look like our truck had welts on its hood. But, on the bright side, we had the parking lot to ourselves, we didn't get a knock on our door, no trees fell near us, and we were able to leave as planned the next morning. Even better, the sun decided to pay us a visit as we loaded into the truck.

We were back in business, ready for our 320-mile drive to Greensboro, NC. As we traveled further south, sunset got a little later, which meant we had no problem getting to our KOA site before dark. This KOA journey was right near the highway and had very little going on, but we were able to request a long pull-thru so we could stay hitched, and we were able to launder our dirty clothes from the day before. That's all we needed.

Sunset may be a little later, but sunrise was as well. The next morning, we were packed up and ready to leave at dawn.

When we pulled into the lot at Trailers of the East Coast on Monday at 8:03AM, I still couldn't quite believe that, after all we had been through, we had actually made it. Now it was time to unhitch and keep ourselves busy during our couple of hours of displacement.

We got the call just before 10AM that the trailer was ready to be picked up, and they didn't even need to use the new bracket! They drilled new holes, shifted the old bracket down, and resecured it. When we first got our trailer, one of the biggest complaints in the ATC community was that the fresh tank brackets were too weak to hold up a 100 gallon tank, and they'd start to bow when the tanks were full. Our model was one of the first to have better, stronger brackets. This is a testimony to them.

Now, hopefully we can fill our fresh tank without the deafening scraping of metal on metal, and we can continue our travels as planned. Because our service appointment was so quick, we were able to make it to our reservation at our South Carolina campground, Santee State Park. There is nothing like finally arriving to a beautiful, water-view, wooded campsite after such an ordeal. In two days, we towed 600 miles and had a 2-hour-long service appointment, all the while recovering from our crazy rainstorm. It's not how we wanted the beginning of Season 3 to go, but whenever we face issues such as this, they only make the good parts of RV life even sweeter.