Trials and Tribulations

It has been a while since I have last posted, but there are some really good reasons. It all started very harmless. We arrived in Canyon Lakes, TX Wednesday a week ago, found a nice campground for a week and the world was perfect. By Friday I was not feeling so good and came down with a lousy cold. Two days later Doug caught it and except for going to Fredericksburg on Friday and the Wurstfest on Sunday, we stayed in the rig with a lot of cold medicine and tried to get over the cold.
We left this Wednesday, feeling a lot better and in good spirits, heading towards Roswell, NM. We knew that we would not make it all the way in one day, but that was no problem. Went down some new back roads and got onto Highway 10 West about 11:30 am. By 12:30 pm a lot things changed for us drastically. While driving along at about 60 m/h Doug saw a couple of deer running onto the highway on the eastbound side. He slowed down as much as he could in traffic, but the deer came onto the westbound side and one of them hit the left front bumper, went underneath the truck, hit the front of the rig, went underneath the rig and left us with a lot of damage. It was a terrifying experience. We pulled of the highway as soon as we could to identify how bad the damage was and it is bad. The top and bottom bumper on the left side of the truck was hanging loose, when you turned the wheel, we defiantly had a tire rub. So we got out the wheel jack and crowbar to at least bend the metal back so we could continue on to a dealer to check out the damage. The trailer showed damage on the sewer hose and we were not sure if the deer had gotten into the left axle of the rig and did damage there. We located an Excel dealer about 120 miles from where we were and headed on to San Angelo. The dealer was very nice, checking over the left side of the rig and they replaced parts on the sewer hose so that we are able to dump our grey and black tanks. They did not see any damage on the left axle and we decided to find a campground for the night as it was getting dark already.
I can not describe the mood we were both in. It was very upsetting to hit the deer and I feel bad for the deer, however, truck and the trailer are our home and a lot of damage was caused to our home by this accident. When we tried to dump the tanks the next morning we noticed that the sewer hose cap had gotten jammed by the accident and we had to break it in order to get to the sewer hoseo out of its sleeve. Frustration levels were rising, but we decided that both vehicles were in good enough shape to continue on, since we are planning to meet up with Dave and Michele by middle of next week in Albuquerque or Amarillo.
We spent Thursday night in Lubbock, TX and had a nice dinner and a couple of stiff drinks. This has been a difficult week and a lot of thoughts went through my mind. Are we cut out for this? Should we maybe just settle back down? Well, the couple of drinks and a couple of days after the accident we are in Roswell, NM and are starting to feel a little bit better. We still need to get a repair estimate for the truck, but the insurance company has been notified and a claim has been started. We will stay here until Dave and Michele are closer and then head up north.The state park that we are in is beautiful and I will take some pictures over the weekend and post again soon.