Saturday, April 28, 2012

Wham! Bam! Thank You, Ma'am, Er, Sir!

We left at 9:00 this morning, on our way to the Oaks at Point South, in Yemassee, South Carolina, our destination for tonight.  It was about a 250 mile drive, no biggie for Eldo...About a half hour into our drive, with Sparky passively knitting her way through her second sock, minding her own business and letting Eldy take care of the big business of driving the rig through heavy traffic......

WHAM! BAM!
What the hell was THAT??????!!!!! SOMETHING HIT THE COACH!!!!! Did we blow a tire? Eldy quickly pulled over to the shoulder to see...Sparky's heart was beating a million times a minute...It was so SCARY! It sounded like a cannon shot hitting the side of the motorhome! He said he saw something black go flying by the window while he was driving...But it wasn't any of our tires. We thought maybe the truck driver who passed us had blown a tire and it smacked the side of the motorhome. All the tires were ok....whew! But the side of our Tiffin wasn't...A rest stop was less than a mile away, we pulled in, just as we saw the driver of the truck who passed us pull out. He must have been checking HIS rig for a blown tire. He apparently didn't have the damage but his rig sucked up the road debris and then threw it at us...Gee, thanks a LOT, buddy! But, it could have been a lot worse, and maybe he didn't know what happened as he blew by us. We looked at the damage...It makes you want to cry when you see a nice, almost new rig with no scratches get a bunch all at once....
Our Tiffin has such a nice shiny coat it's hard to see how bad it REALLY looked....you can see the reflection of the RV's from across the way in it.
Whatever hit us, bounced right at Eldy's driver window, slid across the side of the rig and down to the rear tire, it even scuffed the tire and then flew off...thankfully, not under the rig where it could have done some more damage. It could have been worse...There's one small scratch through the paint, the rest can be buffed or super buffed out with the right equipment...We'll probably get the scratch fixed when we head to Red Bay later this year. We've got slides with edges abraded by ill fitting gaskets, so there's a second paint job in our future at Red Bay.

The rest of the trip went uneventfully, thank goodness. Every time a truck passed, Sparky's heart started beating crazy fast, thinking another SOMETHING was going to come flying out at us. We finally arrived with out further mishap....We're settled in at the Oaks at Point South in Yemassee, South CaroLAH-NA for a week. Another FREE stay with our Thousand Trails zone pass, we're out of the Florida Max Pass zone now.....We'll tell you about the park tomorrow.....

6 comments:

  1. Oh, we really loved THE OAKS and the South Carolina low country. . .that's where I had the Low Country Boil I talked about in my blog:

    http://readytogofulltimerving.com/full-time-rv-travelsouth-carolina-hunting-island-state-park-and-lighthouse/

    We also visited Charleston from there. ..the Grayline Bus Tour was good. . .not the best one we've ever been on. . .but a good way to see the city when you only have one day or so. . .

    Enjoy every minute. . .I'll be interested to know if you can get satellite tv at the park. . .we like to have never found a hole in the trees.

    Janice
    FaceBook.com/ReadyToGoFullTimeRVing

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  2. That's so scary. I'm really glad you only got scratches - they will be buffed out. I'm glad you guys are okay and the rig only got surface damage.

    Enjoy your time at the Oaks, and try to relax.

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  3. That sure could have been a lot worse if it had broken the drivers window, hit Eldy and caused an accident! Glad all you got were some scratches. Scary!

    I'm anxious to hear about Yemassee. IF we get to travel this summer, we were planning on staying there to explore Charleston and Savannah. I have concerns the sites are large enough and if our satellite will get a signal. Lots of pics please. :)

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  4. Never know what's gonna jump up on the highway and get ya. Luckily nobody was hurt and not much damage.
    Travel safe out there.

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  5. We've had close encounters of the bad kind with those truck tire remnants...caused a lot of damage to the bar that holds our rear rock guard/mud flap. Glad all is well. We've stayed at The Oaks several times and will always stop there if we are traveling that way.

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  6. OH no! You did a great job of telling this story, I had my heart in my throat. So glad none of you - including the Tiffin was hurt badly. But I know how Eldy was so rightly proud of his beautiful Tiffin with not a scratch on it. I'd be sad and mad both. Wouldn 't it be nice if we had highways for cars and RVs and truckways for semis that they paid for to drive on. The roads for other vehicles wouldn't need nearly as much maintenance as they do now.

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