Oh Happy Day!

Wednesday, June 14 at 9 AM Karen and I arrived at the Alliance RV factory building #3 to pick up our Avenue 32 RLS trailer after 7 days of major repairs and retrofitting. We can't thank the Alliance team enough, especially Carl, Larry and Tristen for all their hard work and attention to detail to get us whole again.

I told Karen that we now need to refer to our fifth wheel as Trinity 2.0. Larry showed me photos of the reinforced bracket they welded to the back wall aluminum framing in order to strengthen the corners along the bottom and sides. In addition, they added twelve lag screws through the bottom aluminum back wall frame into the steel undercarriage rear frame. The two cracks in the sidewalls were opened up to the aluminum frame joints and welded together to create one continuous joint then repaired and painted to match the exterior finish.

The icing on the cake was all the extra work the Alliance team did like re-caulking joint transitions, taping slide roof seams, cleaning air conditioner filters and adjusting our closet doors to track properly.

After doing our walk-thru, signing off the repair worksheet (with a few notes for the record) and reloading our belongings, I backed up the truck and hooked up Trinity 2.0. We departed Bay #62 at 10 AM and headed for St John's Evangelical Lutheran Church, a Harvest Host in Girard, PA, about 321 miles east. It took almost 6 hours to drive but we were both so glad to be back on the road again it really didn't feel too fatiguing. The joy of having our home back provided the adrenaline boost we needed to make the long drive possible!

Friends we made at the rally, Sean and Kathy from Erie, PA picked us up after we arrived and we all went out to dinner that evening. We told them about our complete satisfaction with Alliance and the way they took care of our repairs. During the evening we discussed a possible 2024 trip to Alaska together. I showed Sean the 2023 Alaska Milepost book I received from Amazon the other day. We decided to keep in touch and committed to start the necessary research to make an Alaska trip a reality.

Overall, it was a great, productive day. On Thursday, June 15 we departed Girard, PA around 9 AM and drove another five and a half hours, 308 miles to the Woodland Farm Brewery in Utica, NY, another Harvest Host. We stopped at the local Walmart to do some grocery shopping and filled our refrigerator back up with all kinds of goodies.

Tomorrow we drive the final leg of this trip to Button Bay State Park in Ferrisburgh, VT so we can attend the wedding festivities of Karen's cousin Elizabeth Phelan to Zach Stone this weekend. We thought we might miss out if our coach wasn't finished in time, but thankfully Alliance came through.