MERRY CHRISTMAS to ALL

We hope all our readers have a wonderful holiday season.

We have not been posting lately for several reasons. The main one is we are stranded in Tyler, Texas. I mentioned in the previous blog that we were rear-ended in Mississippi. The trailer is sitting at the repair shop waiting for all the parts to show up. When we had a wreck the hitch was bent, so that is the first thing they are going to fix. Hopefully we will able to pull the rig to a campground and stay in it until the rest of the parts show up. As of now we are in an extended stay room in Tyler while we wait. I was not willing to pull the trailer any further with the hitch bent. I thought I had pressed my luck as far as I was willing to. The estimate on the repairs was $12,600.00. They tell me that once all the parts are in it will take them 3 weeks to do all the repairs, meanwhile, we are homeless. We were suppose to be at Escapees North Ranch Park to work the first of February, but that looks like it's not going to happen. We hope that all the parts arrive by the first of the year and they can get right on it. 

That's it for now

Duane and Louise 

More trouble

We have fallen behind again. Our last blog ended with us heading to Escapees Plantation park in Alabama. We arrived there without any difficulty.  We visited with friends Chris and Jim Machett, I played pool and Louise played dominoes. As always we had a good time there. We had decided to stay the weekend and head on to Texas Monday. We should have left on the Thursday before.We were not on the road long before we ran into rain. I hate driving in the rain. We got to Seminary, MS, stopped at a light, WHAM!!! hit from behind. I have no idea how anyone could  miss seeing a trailer the size of ours sitting still, but she did. Her car was a total mess. They took the girl that was driving the car to the hospital. I was told later that she was treated and release that night. We were not injured at all. I can't say the same for the trailer. 

 We have a goose neck adapter on the kingpin. The force of the hit bent the kingpin plate.

One of the hinges that broke out. There are several broke.

 The bar with all the springs and the plate they attach to are bent in

The stabilizer jack is really bent up

This is a pic of the underside. You are looking at the bottom of the under belly tool boxes all caved in with broken welds.

I took the trailer to the repair center in Tyler, TX on Monday. I will call them tomorrow to see if they can give me a clue as to how long it is going to take to fix it. They were going to put it on a frame machine today to check to see if the frame is bent. We are hoping they can get it fixed in a couple of weeks, we shall see.

I took the truck in on Tuesday to get the heater fixed. The drivers side had no heat. I was told that an electrical part was bad. They said that the dash has to come out to get to it, a ten hour job and $1100.00. I have an extended warranty so a call was place to them. They told the dealer to wait to work on it till they could send a man out to look at it. He showed up today and tried to say because the truck is F450 that it was commercial and they don't cover commercial. Now 2 years ago when I bought the truck the fact that it was a F450 didn't stop them from selling me the extended coverage. They called me and ask what I pulled with the truck. He said you have a ball in the bed. I said yes to pull my rv with. The tripod stabilizer was in the bed of the truck and he wanted to know what I used that for. After 10 minutes of questions they agreed to pay for the repairs. We should get it back late tomorrow. We were suppose to go to son Duane's house in Van Alstyne, TX on Monday the 2nd but that had to be put off a bit. 

We sure hope that the trailer is fixed soon, we miss our home. We are able to stay at the homes of our kids for a while but don't want to outstay our welcome.

We also hope that our trouble is over for a while, I'm getting a little tired of this...lol 

Pics from Thanksgiving with the kids coming up next

Duane and Louise