East coast heading south.

 After another great dinner at Chases Diner it was time to go. The end of our “Outbound” trip and time to turn around. It has been enormous fun but we still have more adventures to find yet.

"The Breakers" built for Cornelius Vanderbilt in Newport Rhode Island

We wandered south thru Massachusetts and into Rhode Island and started hearing news about a tropical storm forming in the Atlantic called Henri.

Fabulous interiors

No strangers to hurricanes we kept an eye on it and made plans. We were due to leave Rhode Island on Sunday morning having enjoyed a few days around Providence and Newport. Henri was looking to arrive Sunday afternoon somewhere in the region of where we currently.

More interiors.

A look at the storm track and it’s timing made us decide to leave at 8am and instead of heading south to Delaware to head west to Allentown Pennsylvania (PA) then turn south from there.

The plan worked and we had some moderate rain but no high winds which are no fun in a high sided box like a motor home.

What we hadn’t reckoned on was the terrible state of the roads in PA which were more like motocross tracks than roads and consistently awful all day. So bad that they damaged the suspension of the coach which started to sway from side to side occasionally and to pull to the left slightly under braking.

We reached our destination for the day, Lums Pond State Park in Bear Delaware (DE) which is a nice little park with full hook ups. We had been conserving our fresh water and taking steps to stop our grey water and black water holding tanks from getting too full. We pulled in and immediately dumped our tanks and got connected to the power and water.

Lance like GOOD beer too.

We chose this place because we have friends nearby, Charlie and Debbie Bricker and Lance McKay who we have know thru our motorcycle days for many years. What a delight to meet them again after 5 years. Lots of catching up was done.

With Charlie and Debbie

Our next stop was planned to be Baltimore to see our son Fred and his wife Cori plus more friends from our motorcycle days, some of whom have become RVer’s like us.

The coach had been handling strangely since the pounding it took on the rough roads in Pennsylvania. I posted about it on Facebook thinking it was a broken shock absorber.

Dave and Gloria Pumphrey are super people , Dave drives a truck, they have a mobile disco (and did a great job at our daughters wedding years ago) plus they have a mobile Barbecue and find time to ride motorcycles and camp in their RV too! Dave heard about the suspension issues we were having and invited to come over to his place and see if we can fix it because he does all the work on his motor home himself and has a big enough driveway WITH HOOK UPS and all the tools to do they job!!

When we examined the suspension there was no obvious signs of a bad shock absorber but the rear trailing arm supporting the axle was snapped clean thru on the right side! Research revealed that is was a known problem on some models of Monaco and ours was one.

The company that built it has since gone out of business and the recall on the suspension is no longer enforceable. Fortunately there is a company in Oregon who manufacture a replacement that is much stronger.

If you are fortunate enough to have friends like Dave and Gloria you are indeed fortunate. Pretty soon they had mobilized our motorcycle friends in the area and invited them round for Lasagna! Friends we haven’t seen for 5 years or more. What a great time we had.

Meantime the supplier for the replacement trailing arm that was broken on the right side of the rig was rush shipping a pair to Baltimore and they were due in the following Monday.

The broken suspension arm

Broken clean thru.

I am posting a separate article on the suspension repair so if you are into mechanical things you can read it.

https://banbrv.blogspot.com/2021/09/2009-monaco-cayman-broken-trailing-arm.html

Dave and George, you would recognize them anywhere.

We thought we were done with hurricanes after Henri chased us around thru New York and Pennsylvania but then Hurricane Ida’s remnants swept thru halfway into the repair of the coach, which may have actually done us a favor by giving us time to think about how we went about doing the first side and letting us improve a LOT on the second side.

Old unit top and the sturdy new one bottom

Annapolis MD is about 20 miles from Dave’s house and although we got torrential rain we were spared the tornado that did so much damage over there.

So we are happy to report we are safe and well and have a repaired coach.

Ginger, needed lots of spoiling.

We got to catch up with a whole lot of great people Fred and Cori, Lyn and Doug, Dave and Gloria, Al and Jackie, Dave Bohrer, George and Jen, Butch, Terry, Neci. If I accidentally left somebody off the list I apologize for my poor memory, we love you just as much as everyone else.

We didn’t get to see my friends from Alion Science unfortunately but circumstances just didn’t allow it. Catch you next time around!