| | | Hi Woody........................your post prompts me to respond with a story.
Dusty (see header) is 42 years old and has seen a lot of road. We bot Dusty from our neighbor in 1986, and although he'd used her mainly for hunting and fishing camp, she was in pretty good shape. We had a couple of young children at the time, and did a fair amount of camping. Once they left home we continued to do a lot of camping, and I'd take her up to our favorite local National Forest campground often and spend the week while my hubby worked. He'd come up on Friday and we'd spend a nice weekend fishing and hiking.
One year we took Dusty into the Bitterroot/Selway area, driving back nearly 90 miles on a FS road that was fairly maintained, but still had its share of potholes and washboard. Dusty was beaten around pretty good, but held up and still provided a comfortable abode. We camped in a dispersed spot next to the Selway river, and didn't see another human for 5 glorious days.
After we returned home, and in the following year, we still went camping in Dusty.................until. Until on one outing with friends, me being alone because it was mid-week and hubby wasn't going to show up until Friday I awoke late one night to a mouse running across my forehead. For the first time ever and on that trip I'd had problems with mice getting inside, so I knew there were holes. My friends and I tried filling them with steel wool and also filled a bucket 1/2 full of water, spread peanut butter around the rim and placed it in a strategic spot outside of Dusty. OMG the sight of all those mice.........dozens and dozens........ drowned in that water was awful. What I didn't realize was there was a hole the size of a basketball under the sink. The linoleum was hiding the hole, and the mice would gleefully enter Dusty at night where the sink pipe ran through the floor.
That was it for me.
We ended up buying a couple of new rigs...........a 19" nomad that was horrible to tow, so we got rid of it pronto, and bot a 27' Komfort fifth wheel that was wonderful, but huge (to us.) After using it for a few trips we realized that we longed to go to back into the wilderness..............where the fifth wheel would never go, and we missed Dusty terribly.
Fortunate for us, we'd kept Dusty, so there was an out.
Hubby took Dusty apart, replaced all of the upright studs and insulation, and also the floor, there he installed marine plywood. He put everything back into Dusty the way it had always been and we were good to go. She was tight as a ship and no mice were going to get inside. (and to this day, none have.)
Then the flood hit.
It was 2006, and by that time we'd bot ourselves a little piece of ground fronting a river up in the mountains. We'd take Dusty up in the summer, park it under a shed roof we'd built and she was our cabin. We weren't familiar with the November floods and hadn't brought Dusty home yet, when on November 4th the rains began, and the river rose and rose and rose. By Nov 5th the river was 8 1/2' over flood stage, and we were very worried that Dusty was gone. We couldn't get into the area because the road in was under 3' of water, not to mention the authorities wouldn't let us.
When we finally were able to get in, the land was devastated, logs everywhere and holes in the ground big enough to put a car in. When we got there , Dusty was gone!
We found Dusty a couple of lots down from ours lodged between two fir trees. She was upright, and intact. We got her door open, and miraculously, there was very little water damage.
We found out later she'd floated like a boat, and took out two carports before she came to rest against those trees. It took 8 months to get her out, and when we did, we went to work cleaning and repairing and making her right. She has a few scars from that experience, but since the flood we've been on several camping trips and did a three week trip to the SW last Sept. and she was a real champ.
We are ever so grateful we decided to replace her mangled up floor with marine plywood, and wonder at the fortuitousness of it all.
I can honestly say after that experience, I'm partial to wood. ;) |
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