Thank God for our Guardian Angels

Friday, May 19 we traversed from Virginia to West Virginia. The four hour plus journey west took us through the Shenandoah Valley with the Blue Ridge Mountains to the south and the Allegheny Mountains to the north. The scenery was a wonder to behold. I can only image what it looks like in the fall. This time of the year everything is various shades of green.

With one stop to fuel up and do some last minute shopping, we arrived at the Peaceful Valley Assembly of God church parking lot to find we had company. Another trailer was also using this Harvest Host provider for overnight parking. We set up and went to visit our neighbors Tom and Terri from Colorado Springs. They are also on their way to the Ark Encounter in Kentucky; maybe we'll run into them again! While setting up, I realized I had completely drained our fresh water tank before traveling. Fortunately, I had 3 hoses so I could reach the church water spigot. I filled the tank 2/3 full so we would be able to use our water pump for things like the toilet and dishwashing. We went to bed that night with plans to travel the next day only one and 1/2 hours to Camp Creek State Park with plans to stay there for two days.

Saturday morning we're packing up to leave. One of the last things we do is bring in the three slides on the trailer. Well, guess what? One of our slides, the bedroom slide won't retract. Oh boy, okay, now what do we do? It's Saturday; Alliance's customer service isn't open so we go online to YouTube. We discover that there is a slide controller under the slide in the storage bay. It is flashing two green LED lights and 8 red LED lights. This is the code for Motor #2 which has a electrical short. GREAT! Okay, "Houston we have a problem...again!"

I won't bore you with the details but the work around, according to our RV Tech buddy Scott Shackelford in Tucson, was to remove motor #2 and manually push the slide side in while Karen activates the slide button inside the trailer to actuate motor #1 at the same time. This whole event took all day Saturday; so we canceled our reservations at Camp Creek, took a rain check with our friends we had dinner plans with, and called the pastor of the church to get permission to stay another night. Everything worked out and we now have one more repair to add to our Alliance repair appointment on June 5th.

Getting the slide in Sunday morning was a challenge but doable. It only goes in a couple of inches at a time, but we had success and then used my camera monopod to keep pressure between the interior wall and the slide molding so it wouldn't open while driving down the road. Thankfully, Scott informed us about this precaution.

I went to our Trip Wizard App and found a lovely RV park in Georgetown, Kentucky about 4 and a half hour drive that we were able to book for 5 days; Sunday, May 21 through Friday, May 26. We're hoping we can extend for 3 more days through the Memorial weekend if another family makes a last minute cancellation. We are praying and crossing our fingers, so please do the same.

Thank God for Scott and Holly back in Tucson; they once again came through as our guardian angels when we needed help on the road. Thank you, thank you...thank you!