Today was a bad day. We don't get many bad days traveling, but this was a bad day.
It started out well enough. It was another beautiful clear day, and we only had about 60 miles to drive. We got up, took showers while we still had full hookups, ate breakfast, and started for Mt. Rainier.
We hit the biggest traffic jam of the trip trying to get into Mt. Rainier. We waited in line about 20 minutes to get into the park. They're doing major road construction on the Nisqually entrance road. The repairs are certainly needed.
We drove into our campsite, and then the "fun" began. When we tried to unhook the Explorer, we couldn't get the main hitch bolts out. The Explorer was just at enough of an angle to the motorhome that the bolts were torqued into place, and we couldn't get them out. We tried everything. When we opened the tailgate to put all the extra safety cables and electrical cables away, the rear window hinge sheared off, and the window tried to commit suicide. We had a hinge become loose 3 years ago on a trip, and we replaced both hinges then. But this time, the hinge wasn't loose. Instead, the screw that held the hinge to the body of the Explorer sheared off and only the opposite hinge was holding any part of the window to the Explorer. I figured out how to pull the back door trim panel down and removed the rubber gasket that covered the access hole, but no matter what we did, we couldn't get the screw back into the hinge. We worked on it a couple of hours and got nowhere. Eventually our neighbor came over and looked over the situation. He was probably 80 years old with a pacemaker, but he had a trailer full of tools and a complete assortment of bolts and screws. The hinge was already stripped, but he managed to force a screw through the door body and into the hinge enough to hold it in place. It took a power driver, special tools, a mirror, a flashlight, and a lot of dexterity, but he managed to make it work. The neighbor also had some plastic tape, so he taped the window in place. We'll drive down to Morton tomorrow to get the hinges replaced at the Ford dealership. In the meantime, all the thrashing around with the window scratched some of the paint off on the back door down to the metal. Ouch!
So, we had the window somewhat re-connected and taped into place, but we still had to get the Explorer unhitched. We pulled farther into the campsite driveway to try to straighten the hitch, but that failed, too. We drove out into the campground road, and finally got straightened out enough that we could unhitch. I drove around the campground loop and re-entered our campsite. It was a pull-through with a high point in the center and a side-to-side slant. It took 3 adjustments, but we finally got the motorhome leveled. It wasn't until we were all set up and sitting in the campsite that we noticed the rear wheels on one side were off the ground. At that point, we weren't going to fight with the leveling again.
We stayed in camp the rest of the day and tried to keep cool. It was right around 90 all afternoon. We walked down to the Ranger Program tonight and were educated on the power of the Mt. Rainier rivers. We'll see how tomorrow goes.
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