HEADING HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS!

Jules’ Journal:

By: Julianne Lillie, 12/9/22

THE TRIP HOME!

As most of you know by now, we have decided to cut the first half of our trip a bit short so we can get home to see Great Gram and have a little extra time to be with family before the holidays hit. This means we are cutting out 6 days of our trip and will be skipping Louisiana and Hot Springs National Park. But we do plan on visiting those places once our entire trip has been completed! We figured those would be great destinations for a future Spring Break or summer vacation!

From Memphis, TN we left out early in the morning preparing ourselves for a long 7-hour travel day across the great state of Arkansas. It had been raining on us since we got to Memphis and by now the campground looked like the perfect mud wrestling pit! To add to it, none of us slept a wink the night before because we were so excited to get home! So, you can imagine we were all a bit muddy and groggy… but still eager and excited to get home to our family!

We finally pulled out of the campsite at 8am leaving the mud behind us and letting the rain wash off our truck and camper as we hit the road! We were making excellent time and at about noon we pulled over at a pull-thru rest stop near London, AR where we made lunch for the road. We hopped back in the truck and as we were pulling through the rest stop when we heard high pitched screeching/whistling and couldn’t figure out if it was us or another truck? Jason stopped, hopped out, and our nightmare came true! It. Was. Us.

And Jason knew EXACTLY what had happened because it was the EXACT SAME THING that happened to us a little over 2 years ago in Colorado! The weld broke on the RV’s driver side suspension hanger bracket causing the bracket to fold in and our tires were touching and rubbing together… unable to roll. The screeching was us dragging the tires across the wet asphalt! For a split second we were all in disbelief… and then the sense of overwhelming defeat set in. How could this be? After driving over 21,000 miles all over the country for the past 6 months, our trailer decides right NOW to break!? When we are just 3 hours from home and so eager to see our family!?

Jason hopped back in (after muttering a bad word… yep, I caught him!) and he pulled us over to the side so we were no longer blocking the center pull-thru. He started making phone calls while Jaycie and I started texting our prayer warriors! (All Jett was worried about was keeping his WIFI connection…typical! Ha!)

As I then started praying myself, I started with thanking God for all the positive things. Like thanking Him it was during the middle of the day on a weekday while roadside assistance and mobile RV techs are working! And thanking Him that it had stopped raining on us… FINALLY! And thanking Him that we were safely pulled over at a rest stop and not dangerously on the side of the road. And thanking Him that it broke when we were going super slow pulling and not 75 MPH on the highway potentially rolling our trailer and us! And then all of the sudden our situation didn’t look so bad! God was with us and He was going to deliver us just like He did last time and like He does every time! And about this time, Jason finally got ahold of a mobile welder guy named Nate. He took some measurements and photos and texted them to him. Nate was at home (which was only 10 minutes away from where we were stranded) and loaded up his welding equipment to come check out our situation. So now Jaycie and I were praying (and alerting our prayer warriors to do the same) that Nate was our man and he hopefully could help us!

Here we are waiting on Nate. (Definite nail biter for Jaycie... Jett is oblivious! LOL)

Sure enough, Nate showed up and thought he could do the job! He and Jason got the trailer jacked up, tire removed, and after further investigation realized the cause of the broken weld on the bracket. Another specialized bracket piece had broken off which stressed out the hangar bracket causing the weld to give way. Well, this was a new problem.

Nate could fix the weld, but we still needed this special bracket piece to slide into place before we could get down the road. Nate, Jason, and I started looking for suspension part stores near us and found one. But they needed us to bring in the part because there were so many different sizes! They needed to make sure it was an exact fit. And right about this time Nate’s dad swung by to check on him and volunteered to take the part to the shop, pick up the new one and bring it back to us! This allowed Nate to start in on the welding! (Definitely God’s provision there!)

So now we are praying that the Dad can find the exact special bracket piece and Nate can complete the weld and reinforce it. After about an hour and 15 minutes, the weld was done about the same time that the Dad rode in with the perfect sized bracket piece! They bolted the specialized bracket into place, put the tire back on, and remved the jacks. We then paid our saviors not only with money but praise! Nate and his Dad were our angels! Nate is nice young married man and new dad to a 3-month old daughter! He has been welding for 7 years and has just started up his own mobile business. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any social media pages we could brag about him on, so I just decided to do it here in the blog! If you’re ever in Russellville/London, AR area and need a mobile welder – Nate Boxnick is your MAN!

The whole ordeal lasted about 3 hours and we were back on the road again with 3 more hours of driving! I’m happy to say we made it home safely around 7pm and were extremely happy to be HOME! We hugged some of our family’s necks that were there making us dinner and snuggled our beloved bunny, Cotton, whom Jaycie has missed dearly!

Now that we’re home, the FUN begins with unloading the RV and prepping for the 8 family Christmases we will have over the next 3 weeks! Not to mention all of the many sleepovers and playdates the kids want to have with their family & friends! But through all the fun chaos, we are most looking forward to hugging my grandma’s “Great Gram’s” neck! Can’t wait to see her beautiful smiling face and visit with her!!!!

TRIP HALF-TIME STATUS REPORT

It’s crazy to think that we’ve been on the road and in our RV for 183 straight days! Man we’ve covered a LOT in just 6 months! Here is our updated Map showing the states, landmarks, & adventures that we’ve covered during the first half of the trip so far! (Don’t worry Louisiana, we won’t leave ya hangin’ forever!)

And here’s my refrigerator after the first half of the trip! I’ll be transferring all of my magnetic treasures to our Garage Game Room and will start with a clean slate for the second half of the trip!

Our plan is to get back on the road for our second half of the trip either late January or early February! Our start date will have to be a bit fluid as we are wanting to spend as much time with Grandma as possible AND need to get some maintenance work done on both the camper & truck before departing again. I will try and post another blog after the holidays as we’ll probably know a bit more details to the plans by then!

For now, the 4Js (and Santa) wish you all a VERY Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!