Sierra Vacation - Even More Excitement!

Ok, so this is the last post on the Sierra Vacation - I promise! We wrapped our vacation on a fantastic note - Ryan caught that humongous fish. We headed down the mountain - almost 5000 feet in 15 minutes. There were some pretty steep drops with the canyon on our side of the road. We got into Bishop, CA and we were making a left hand turn into the gas station to dump the black and gray tanks. We heard a huge noise and felt a jolt, and we weren't sure what had happened. We hopped out of the truck to discover that the tow hitch had broken in half. Half of the tow hitch was still attached to the truck and the other half was attached to the tongue of the trailer that was on the ground.

(This is the hitch after it was repaired, but you can see how it was sheared)


The sway bars were still attached to the truck, so that kept the trailer from running into the truck, but allowed the trailer to be pulled about 10 feet with the tongue on the ground.

Here you can see the BIG gash that we left in the road from dragging the tongue of the trailer.


We were blocking one whole side of the road (we had been making a left turn). Immediately there was someone there (someone who was being blocked by our trailer) that had a jack and a tow hitch on his truck. We unhooked the trailer from our truck and then hooked the trailer to his truck. He pulled the trailer the rest of the way into the gas station and out of the road. While we were still unhooking our truck, the police showed up (the Highway Patrol office was directly across the street) and started directing traffic around the trailer. As soon as we unhooked the trailer and got it set up in the parking lot of the gas station, a truck showed up with two guys in it. They were down the street and heard the noise, and they came to see if they could help. They worked at a welding shop that was about 100 feet away. I stayed with the kids (in the trailer that is parked at the gas station:) )


while Norm took the truck and the parts of the tow hitch to the welding shop. He came back for us shortly and we went to lunch. Things settled down enough and we started to think - what if that would have happened when we were coming down the mountain!! or on the long stretch of desolate road. We VERY EASILY could have lost control of the vehicle and died! If it had to happen, that was the VERY BEST place for it to happen.

We KNOW that Heavenly Father watched over and protected us on that day! We are grateful to be alive! Things could have been SOOOOO much worse! There was no damage to the truck or the trailer, and we were all okay! People went out of their way to help us - complete strangers! The tow-hitch had to be repaired - that was minuscule in comparison. The welding shop did a MAJOR welding job (there is no way that it will break again!). They told us that the weld from the manufacturer wasn't very good. Parts of the tow-hitch were rusted and that it was just a matter of time before it broke.

Our newly repaired, super-duper tow-hitch.


Because of all the excitement, we ended up being in the car for over 9 hours. The kids were falling apart after about 7 hours. Here Bradin had dug through the diaper bag to find a plug (who knew that I still had that in there? I guess I need to check the diaper bag more frequently).


We were so tired when we got home that we parked the trailer in front of our house and made sure that everything was locked, and decided that we would deal with it the next day. The next morning while we were cleaning out the trailer, we discovered that a storage compartment on the trailer had been broken into during the night and stuff had been stolen (stupid stuff - a water hose, a filter, gloves - someone had just grabbed the whole bin and everything in it. They tried to break into the compartment that had all of Norm's fishing stuff, but they didn't get that one open. GRRRRR - I HATE THIEVES!!).

Despite ALL of that, we loved vacation! All of the bad things that happened aren't overshadowing the good things. We are overwhelmed by the love we feel, and the knowledge that we have that Heavenly Father is aware of us. He watches over us and protects us! This will be a vacation that is remembered for a long time to come!