Well here it is, our final day of our Grand Adventure II. It's funny, it seems just like yesterday when we were in Moad, UT, New Orleans, etc. but at the same time it feels like a very long time too. Hard to explain. Lots in between from when we started until now.
One of the questions I'm sure we will get often will be, "what was your favorite spot/activity"? That is going to be very hard to answer. It will likely be a combination of answers.
For me the best and worst part of the entire trip is the same thing. The best part was the sheer number of places we got to visit and experience. The bad part is the same thing since we didn't have many opportunities to stay more than a day or two at any one place and explore further. I guess we'll just have to go back to those places again! :-)
The drive home was uneventful. It is always nice to drive alongside the Columbia River. Great scenery. We got home and got our vagabond stuff out of the truck. You have to remember, all of our stuff was/is in the trailer. We grabbed the things we thought we would need for a couple of days, but the vast majority of our stuff is still in MT. We put things in garbage bags, which looked funny when we moved into the couple of hotels we stayed in.
It was nice to be back in our house again, even though we would like to stay for a couple of days and start another portion of our trip. It gets into your blood. Faithy and Rio were very happy to be back in the house. Rio was scampering all over the place.
I spoke with one of the guys from the Cardinal RV club Tuesday night. We talked about the various options I had and I was able to bounce a number of questions off of him. I decided to move ahead with the 7000lb axle upgrade as the price quoted to me now didn't seem that far off (after further investigation). I also decided to get 4 new wheels and tires. Both have a higher load capacity than what I had on earlier and combined with the new axles, should provide me with a better load capacity overhead on the trailer and hopefully help ward off events like the one we just went through.
One Wednesday (Day 61) I called to the tow shop and gave them the go ahead for the repairs. I also ordered new wheels and tires. They'll be drop shipped directly to the tow shop. We are planning on heading back to MT on Friday, August 23rd. We'll pickup the trailer that afternoon and then take the next 2 days to come home. We'll probably stay at the 2 campgrounds originally on our itinerary, but were cancelled due to the trailer issue. See, our GAII isn't over yet!
The repair costs are starting to add up quickly. The axle upgrade was $1700, which included a $300 labor cost. The labor cost would have been around $1000 here in OR, so I was pretty happy about that. The new wheels / tires were $2100, which included shipping. I also ordered new front legs for the trailer. One of the legs started giving me trouble the last few days and there isn't any easy way to fix them other than a complete replacement. That only ran another $450! We spoke with our insurance agent. They likely will cover the damages caused by the wheel coming off, but not the failure itself. That's good, as that is probably another $2000.
We traveled 11,237 miles during our Grand Adventure II, over 60 days. I'll be tallying actual daily distances and fuel used. That post will be in the next few days. We'll try to summarize our final thoughts then as well.
Cathy and the boys headed down to CA this morning. Cathy's mother is hosting a family reunion in honor of the anniversary of Cathy's father's death. Unfortunately I have to face reality and go back to work.
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