The best laid plans

We were so ready to leave Ham Lake for our tire  appointment the following day.  We've never been so organized.

I loaded up the car and had a bunch of space left over.  I loaded up the bays and had space left over.  Now I was getting scared...what was I missing?

This was the first time we ever had everything packed the night before; we even pulled the sewer connection.  All that was needed was to pull in the awning and then get the hoses and electric cords in the morning.  Easy Peasy!

All was rolling along swimmingly until Left Brain pushed the button to roll in the awning.  Nothing.  No power. Nada.  Zilch.  It seems to have gotten wet in the rain and fried out the motor, but who knows for sure what happened.

I pulled up the operator manual since this is the one part of the rig we were never given paperwork for.  Oh, this is simple...just use the strap and hook for a manual retraction.  No problem, except we didn't own those things.  So we made a quick run to a nearby RV center and lo and behold they had exactly what I needed.  Feeling relaxed now we proceeded to do our Walmart shopping and grabbed some lunch at the Subway inside the store.

Once back to the campsite we proceeded to insert the strap and proceeded to roll up the awning.  Nope.  Nothing. Nada.  So it was off to plan B...manually roll it up by hand.  Well, let's just say that didn't work so well.

To make a long story short, we ended up removing the awning from the arms, used cable ties to fasten the arms tot he side of the RV and straps to hold the awning part on top of the roof.  This took the better part of the afternoon and the Queen found herself up on top of the roof.  I've never been up here before, always had a fear of heights until that little zip line adventure in December with the kids.  I did have to remind myself that I was NOT in a harness and to be careful.

Thankfully our neighbor, Lee, was over with his tall ladder and assistance.  I'm not sure how we would have done this with just the two of us.

We showered and headed over to the kids house, where we had been invited for supper.  Now we have two major things to take care of tomorrow, but hey...nobody died and it happened in a good area with lots of help from friends next door.

Hopefully the next day will go much better.

Long Live the Queen