No plan survives contact with the enemy!

I have now been through all the stages of grief, and I am sorry, I didn’t handle them very gracefully. It didn’t help that we were not getting a chance to eat much, and I am awful when hangry. 

1. Shock/Denial
2. Anger
3. Barganing
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

Yep, all of those, and we are going to be like Frozen and “Let it go…”

Let’s get up to date:
When last I posted, it was Wednesday. We were sitting in a rest area, unable to move. We were there for about 7 or 8 hours. Pebble roadside assistance sent out an RV specialist tow service. They arrived with 2 flatbeds. One big and one a little smaller. Shout out: The RV specialist tow truck drivers were great, friendly, knowledgeable, and reassuring. Thank you!

Steve debated with them whether to tow it on a flatbed or by lifting just the front. Before we had to make that decision, they unhitched our truck and, with the caster wheel on the ground, Steve tried one last time to get the Pebble’s jack motor to retract. Amazingly, with the weight of the Pebble on the caster wheel, the motor retracted the jack! 

This is something we couldn’t attempt because once the tongue was on the ground, it would take a floor jack or a tow truck to lift the Pebble back up to the hitch, which the tow truck did. Now, we were mobile, as in no longer stuck. We didn’t have to be towed. But we were not good to go either. 

Now, what to do? Food! We found a Sushi and Ramen place that stayed open until 10 PM. We walked in at 9:15 PM and got our order in, just before “last call.” Ramen = comfort food. Steve had sushi. It was very much needed!

After food, it was too late to find a campsite, so we boondocked in the far back corner of the local Walmart parking lot. How many of you can say that you have taken a shower in a Walmart parking lot?
I can!

In the morning, we found a cute coffee shop/cafe called Loaded Joe’s. We had lattes and breakfast. The waiter, I’m pretty sure he was the owner, felt sorry for our story of woe and comped our drinks. Then, when Steve RAVED about the local hot sauce they served, he gave us a bottle to take with us. It was sweet but also reinforced our feeling of being refugees!  Hehe.

Plans were still up in the air. We needed to go hang out somewhere. The dog had been pretty cooped up, so we looked for an off-leash dog park. We found one with a lake, some level 2 ChargePoint chargers, nice bathrooms, and food trucks. We rolled up to the chargers and plugged in both truck and trailer.  Just because, ABC (Always Be Charging). It was cheap and slow. 

There were many calls to Pebble Support, heated and sad discussions between Steve and me. We’d already let go of our fun plans for getting to Canada. I sorely did not want to miss the trip to Prince Edward Island (PEI) with my daughter’s family. The grandkids were counting on us. I was counting on it.

Edit: I want it to be clear: Pebble support has been great. We put them through a lot. I was cranky. It was a tough situation. They did their best to accommodate us. 

Options debated:

1. Go to the RV Park where Pebble wanted their tech to meet us with parts to fix our jack… on Monday or Tuesday. That was 5-6 days of waiting. The big problem with this plan is that we’d need to really push to complete the 1900 miles to Ottawa to be in time for the PEI trip. We’re not sure we can make it in time. If we do make it, it will be a brutal push and not much fun. 
2. Buy a floor jack and just continue on towards Canada, manually jacking the trailer off the ball every or almost every time we stop. That’s 3-4 times a day. But then we wouldn’t get fixed until we got home. So, we’d be doing that to PEI and on the way home too.
3. Throwing in the towel and just heading home. (This was me, hangry)

Issues with plan #1:

1. I didn’t care for the RV park where Pebble insisted we meet the tech.
2. It’s 30 minutes in the wrong direction for the rest of our trip. 
3. It’s kind of stark. The hills and river are nice, but there’s no grass or trees at most of the sites, just gravel. There didn’t seem to be much to do if you didn’t like to fish. 
4. No shade, and it’s too windy to leave up our awning. 
5. It’s more expensive than the highest-priced spot we booked for the whole trip up and back.
6. It’s right on I-70, and there is a lot of highway noise.
7. It’s out in the middle of nowhere. 

We spent almost all day at the park, walking the dog, arguing, negotiating, changing our minds, being sad, being mad, yelling, pouting (that was me, hangry again), talking to Pebble Support, sitting in the shade watching kids play soccer, eating at the food truck. It was stressful. 

Acceptance-

Finally, we settled. There was no good option so we took the best bad option.

We went to a hardware store and bought a pricey floor jack (we have a nice one at home, so not something we want to keep. The store said we could return it!). We needed the jack to get the Pebble off the truck. 

We went to the RV Park and checked in… for just one night. We thought we might move to someplace nicer and just come back for the Monday service call. 

The floor jack worked, but we needed some 4x4s to put under the jack to lift it up enough. Steve did a dumpster dive into a construction dumpster on site, for the win. 

It turns out that while the floor jack option worked, it was not that easy. It would not have been a viable plan if we continued to go on to Canada.

The RV park is clean and neat. The facilities are all new and well kept. The staff is nice. They gave us a 20% “Break-Down” discount, which took a little of the sting out of the price. 

So, today, Friday, we booked our spot through Monday, with an option for Tuesday, as we don’t know how long the service will take.  We did much-needed laundry. It’s been a minute since I went to a laundromat. $16 for 2 loads! Yikes!

Today has been chill. Steve found some places to go see nearby. I found a bike path where we can take the new e-bikes.  I’m over trying to resist liking it here (Resistance is Futile! – Yes, I am a Star Trek geek!), and I’m moving on to making the best of this place.