Holy crappers what a week! I don’t even know where to begin, so much happened. How about the beginning, yeah, that sounds good. We arrived late on Thursday night at the Williamsport Maryland KOA. To make a long story short they screwed up the reservations and since we where the last person to make the reservation we had to leave. We quickly packed up and headed towards the campsite that Mike originally wanted to stay at since it was closer to his site. Mike was driving his truck towing the trailer and I’m driving behind him in the van with the kids. So we where driving down the road, we go through this intersection right by the Bryon Memorial park and it looks like the trailer went over a bump, I go through the intersection and there was no bump. Mike stops. I’m thinking. Oh, snap. This isn’t good.
(clicky on all pictures in this post to embiggen them)
I stop behind the trailer and put on my hazard lights, go up to Mike to see what’s wrong. The trailer is sitting on the bed of the truck. Shit. Shit. Shit. The hydraulic lift is taking forever and a day to lift the trailer up so we can see what happened. A few people wonder up from park to see what was going on, the locking clip that is supposed to hold the trailers pin in the hitch malfunctioned and ripped right out of the hitch.
frick, frickity frick frick. When the locking clip ripped out, the pin fell into the rails of the hitch. Thank God it fell there, because it could have ripped right through the tailgate of the truck and sailed right to the ground or worse.
From what Mike told me this hitch can pull up to 24,000 pounds and the trailer weighs 18,500 pounds. If the trailer’s pin didn’t go in the right way it would have fallen right out at the campsite, not 5 miles down the road. First I thought that the camper wasn’t put in right, but the more I thought about it the less that made sense. Mike has a commercial drivers liscense, he drove for TMC a few years ago before he got his old job back at Verizon, so he knows quite a bit about the hitch and how to drive the truck while towing the trailer. (He knows a hell of a lot more about it than I do, and thats OK with me!) The company that makes the hitch has shipped out a new hitch for Mike at no cost. He can’t move the trailer with out it. The company wants the broken hitch back, while makes me a little weary.
There are more pictures of this Wild part of our vacation in this flickr photo set. Many thanks to our Guardian Angel who was working overtime that day! Saturday we ran our errands, this is my second stay in the trailer with the kids. So I found some more things that would come in handy, needed some groceries and had to make a stop at the West Virginia welcome center to find some things to do since we didn’t have any internet access at this campsite (poo!)
Sunday I took the kids down to Harpers Ferry what a neat little town! We explored it a bit, than drove up to the Toy Train Museum and Joy Line Miniature Railroad. I thought Bryce would enjoy this,
he loved watching the toy train go around the track, looking at all the old trains. I do wish they had signs up explaining what the different older models where because I was stumped. No idea what was what, and a sign saying “please don’t touch” woulda been nice too. just sayin’.
Luckily the rain held off long enough for the kids and I to take a ride around the track on the Joy Line miniature railroad. On the last loop around I remembered I had the camera and took a video.
The kids loved the handcars too. You would have thought that it would have worn them out moving themselves around that big track 3 times. But no, it wound them right up!
We finished off this day by meeting Mike at Cracker Barrel and enjoying a yummy dinner. Look for Part 2 of our trip tomorrow since this post has gotten pretty long! This is going to be one busy, busy weekend. Tomorrow we have a family picnic and Corra BFF has a Birthday party sleep over. Sunday I meet my parents in Wilkes Barre and my niece Heather will be visiting for a few days next week.
*one of West Virginia state slogans.
Mistress Stash Enhancer 
Wow, what an ordeal!! So glad that everyone is ok but what a major hassle…At least the kids are having fun, right??
Oh man! What an adventure. I’m glad everything turned out (relatively) okay.
Oh my goodness, that is quite an adventure–full of ups and downs. But it looks like you made some serious memories.
So glad everyone is okay! I admire that you can make the best of a not so good situation.
Oh no! Well I’m glad everyone was all right and it didn’t spoil the rest of your vacation. The train looks like fun!
oh i love harpers ferry! we almost bought a house there when hubby worked for NASA. it was worth the commute!
Yikes! Glad it turned out okay and it sounds like you all had fun anyway. Gotta love those train set ups. We have one around here that is a huge hit!
WOW!! What craziness!! But thank God it sounds as if it ended up being great fun for all. I love the train set – so neat.
Yikes, I’m so glad no one was hurt and at least your were close to your destination. What a pain in the butt though.
Take care and enjoy the vacation.