Nashville - Never Again!!

I have been debating about this post for a few days, but I guess it is time to start writing again. Let me start in the beginning. We went through Tennessee in the fall of 2007 and had problems finding a campground that suited us. Well, the drive from Memphis to Nashville last Thursday really was not bad, traffic was a little bit heavy through Nashville, but we got to the campground okay.

We explained that we have a 40 foot 5th wheel and they said it would not be a problem. Well, next time we will walk to the spot that they want us to fit in first, before we drive in. We got to the spot and found out that it was not big enough. So we went back to the office. By the time we got there Doug was upset and said that the sewer cap had been hit. After some closer investigation we found that we did not hit only the sewer pipe, which was leaking, we also hit a fence, which put a 12 foot rip in the kitchen slide.


We found another spot to pull into so we could investigate how bad the damage was. The bad weather was also coming in fast, so time was of the essence. We were in a grass spot, so it was not that easy to get underneath the rig. Undoing the insulation around the sewer pipe was difficult, but we got it done. We could not find the leak. Next we took of the panel where the shut off valve is. It was wet, but still we could not see where the break was. All we knew at this point was that we could not run any water. It was coming straight back out of the panel opening. The rain started and we went inside. I was so upset, since we did not know if we cracked the gray tank or not. At least the black tank was holding. It rained hard that night and Doug started to check out RV repair services in Elkhart on the Internet the next morning and made some phone calls.

He found a shop with a lot of goods reviews and made an appointment for Monday morning. The plan now was to leave Nashville on Sunday and try to drive the 450 miles to Elkhart in one day. It rained all day Friday and after a thunderstorm in the early evening the campground lost power and we set in the rig with just our 12 Volt lights for about three hours. At least the batteries are working fine. If there was a silver lining to this accident, it really could have been worse. If we would have tagged the fence higher, it could have damaged the water heater and the electric lines that are higher up.

Well, Saturday morning came around and there was a two hour break in the rain. More heavy storms were expected in the afternoon all the way through Sunday. Our rig was sitting in at least 2 inches of water already. We looked at each other and started packing up all our stuff. Since a lot of people had left the campground already, we were able to pull through some open spots to get back to the main road and out of the campground.

We found out later that the storms had been worse south of Nashville and a Teton Home 5th wheel had been turned on his roof during strong winds. I guess we should count our blessings.