May 15th, 2010 The "Bon Voyage" Party on May 12th was a success! I decided to go ahead with the BV Party even though the "Motor House" (in future Blog's known as MH) was involved in a terrible "act of Mother Nature". Mother Nature has been extremely busy this year......earthquakes in Haiti, an erupting volcano in Iceland, flooding in many locales, tornadoes in the mid-section of the US of A, and dangerous trees at Fort DeSoto Park.

On Tuesday, May 11th, the day before the scheduled BV party, we went to Lazy Days (LZD) to get the MH. They had had it for over a month to complete some of the items on the "punch list" one of them being installing new house batteries. I don't want to accuse them of lying, but they had not been installed....they were dead. Before we left their parking lot we called Steve, our service rep, and informed him of our discovery. One of the LZD drivers drove the MH to a service bay and within 30 minutes we had NEW BATTERIES! Hooked up the "TOAD" (the jeep) and headed out.

We went south on I-75 and over the Sunshine Skyway Bridge to avoid rush hour traffic in Tampa. Arrived at the Fort DeSoto campground, unhooked the toad and Rod told me to drive the toad to the campsite and he would be there in a few minutes in the MH. Our friend, Chris Davis, was staying in the campsite next to ours and after saying "hi" he and I waited for the MH to arrive. This is where the "dangerous trees at Fort DeSoto Park" come into play. They bumped up against the passenger side of the MH forcing the main awning cover and the bedroom slide cover toward the rear of the coach. Over compensating while steering to the left, the trees on the driver's side of the coach grabbed one of the "basement" doors and yanked it off its hinges also damaging the 2 doors on either side. There it was.......my beautiful MH, looking as if it had been ravaged by a tornado.......when less than 10 minutes ago it was perfect!

Numerous theories abound as to how it happened but some things just can't be explained. The BV Party was not to be cancelled. We were able to open 2 of the 3 slides giving people inside plenty of room to sit. We probably wouldn't have extended the huge awning anyway as it was a beautiful evening and the guests who sat outside had a great waterview. There was no damage inside so tours were given and the MH received rave reviews.

On Thursday morning Chris and I walked backward in front of the MH to help Rod manuever his way out of the park. We didn't witness any activity by the dangerous trees. We hooked up the toad and headed to Wildwood where Alliance Coach is located. (We won't be doing business with LZD again). Their people surveyed the damage, we spent the night in the MH and met with the nice man from Geico Insurance on Friday.

We hope to hear from Alliance Coach early next week with an estimate on how long it will be before we can commence "Challenger's Travels". The guestimate is somewhere between 2 weeks and a month.