On The Road Again

After 3 months of living in the Ohio Valley, patiently waiting for our beloved 5th wheel trailer to be fixed, we have finally hit the road again. 

This was taken just minutes before we left Dan's sisters house.

Last Monday, Dan and I drove to Pittsburgh (about an hour away) to picked up our "home on wheels." When we stepped into the garage and I saw our 41 foot Columbus Palomina, I fell in love all over again. I missed living in it and couldn't wait to move back in.

Our 5th wheel in the garage shop.

 It took approximately 3 days to load up our belongings and by Friday morning at exactly 9:20 am our little family pulled out of the place we called home for so long and drove south, towards warmer weather. 

Our first stop was in Whytheville, Virginia at Deer Trail Park & Campground where we planned to rest and reorganize. It was there, in rapidly dropping temperatures that we found out our fireplace & heater no longer worked. Suddenly a panic began to set in as we realized neither one of our microwaves worked along with our water heater. What!? Everything in our trailer worked before and now it seemed like nothing was working. 

Dan quickly ran to the nearest Walmart and purchased two space heaters while I brought out All of our blankets and we made it through freezing temperatures unscathed.

The next morning, after coffee and breakfast, we realized that in fact our water heater did work, it just needed more time to heat up in such cold weather. Good! Now we can shower. Next, Dan assessed that all outlets had power, so just the appliances were broken. But how? Dan thinks there was a power surge when the mechanics plugged our trailer into their outlet and therefore burnt anything that didn't have a surge protector. Speaking of which we now need to replace all surge protectors, along with a fireplace and convection oven/microwave. We elected not to replace the outdoor microwave because we never use it. 

All in all, it's not the end of the world. It's just more money than we wanted to spend, but fixable.

Here is the Deer Trail Park (taken in the spring, I forgot to get a picture while we were there) imagine this with bare trees and light snow on the ground.

Next stop, Chattanooga, Tennessee to visit our friends Sabrina and Allen. They have a baby girl we've never met, so that's pretty exciting. We arrived in Chattanooga on Sunday and are staying at Best Holiday Travel Park witch is officially less than a mile into Georgia, so we will be crossing the Georgia-Tennessee border daily. 

Here we are after many rain showers at the Holiday Travel Park

There was so much rain that the boys played with their boats outside or RV

Monday morning we called RV specialist to come out and look at our electrical problems and while we were waiting for them to arrive, all of our lights stopped working. Great! They appeared to only be working off our battery instead of the 50 amp electricity we were plugged into. 

At this point, Dan and I are just trying to keep our cool. Everything seems to be falling down around us and we can't let the kids see that we are close to our breaking point. The RV repair guys came and explained that the power converter was broken. They can order a new one and install in next Monday. Wonderful! 

Now we just need to live without lights for a week. Dan brought in his shop light and we use a lantern. It's just like camping. It adds to the adventure.

Dan's shop light attached to our living room cabinets.

Tomorrow, we are going to see Sabrina & Allen and I'll keep you all posted on what unfolds in the coming week