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Jim

RVF Supporter
Joined
Dec 18, 2019
Messages
3,866
Location
North Carolina
RV Year
2016
RV Make
Newmar
RV Model
London Aire 4551
RV Length
45
Chassis
Freightliner
Engine
Cummins / I6 Diesel Pusher 600HP / 1,950 ft-lbs
TOW/TOAD
2016 Jeep Rubicon
Fulltimer
No
OMG, what a trip! I figured we could wait in Orlando until the hurricane went back out to sea, and that part of the plan worked fine. We left Orlando yesterday and stayed the night in Homestead after a very windy/rainy day on the road. Somewhere along the line we developed a strange noise that we never could find. So we grit our teeth and tried to ignore it. Then after hitting a HUGE hole in the road (yeah, the toll road that FL makes you pay to drive on) the power vanity shade that extends across the windshield came crashing down. Not surprisingly, the noise that we were wondering about was replaced with my wife's screaming, as well as with a few not to be repeated words of my own.

Made an emergency stop on the side of the road and got the mess cleared up. Mind you, the wind is hitting 60 mph and the rain is sheeting down so bad you can't see 20' in front of you. Got back on the road, both of us in somewhat a diminished state of shock, and continued in a new found silence. Well, until the windshield wiper self-destructed and started flopping around on the windshield. No way to pull over as we were on the Interstate, and things got serious in a hurry. Vision was limited to me seeing a couple of the white dashes on the road, and that vanished whenever a car/truck went by. We were in near panic as we hunted for a side road to get off on. Finally, we found a place to pull over and I fixed the wiper with some zip ties.

So we got back on the road again and started to do battle with the bridges you have to cross to get to the keys. The bridges themselves are not bad but the wind was so violent that I crawled along at 35 mph, promising myself that I would find a bottle of 100 year old scotch when (and if) we ever got to Key West.

We finally got to Bluewater Key, got backed into our lot, and celebrated our survival with a couple of high-fives. :) And now, I'm off to find that bottle of scotch.

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Don't kid yourselves, the place looks nice and quiet. But every 20-30 minutes a new band of diminishing hurricane will hit, and the rain/wind is not to be taken lightly. :)
 
Yikes. would a lighter gasser have survived? Glad you are ok. Mkes me think maybe being packed away for the winter, waiting for snow to be over is not so bad after all.:cool:
 
Yikes. would a lighter gasser have survived? Glad you are ok. Mkes me think maybe being packed away for the winter, waiting for snow to be over is not so bad after all.:cool:
Drive slow and you would have been fine. It's just a little unnerving to have wind hitting that hard when you're on a bridge with nothing but a 3' wall between you and the ocean below. (One of these bridges is 60' above the water. :eek: ) And of course, you're sitting much higher in the coach so you're looking down at the road and the ocean below.

My steering wheel will forever be imprinted from my white-knuckle grip!
 
It's a very busy table. . .

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My heart started pounding when reading what you went thru....sheesh....
 
My heart started pounding when reading what you went thru....sheesh....
lol, you should have been in the drivers seat! :)

Trish was so scared that she wouldn't sit in the passenger's seat and stayed in the back of the motor home where she couldn't see what was going on around us. Kind of like an ostrich with it's head in the sand. I kept telling her to get the camera and take some pictures so she would have something to remember this with, but she was not coming out.

And now, here we are all safe and sound with no pictures. :confused: But as the say in the Jeep world, "we didn't die!"
 
Glad you made it safe. Same thing happened to me on the way to Charlotte on our last trip. Rain coming down and the wiper blade assembly unlatched. Duck tape to the rescue. I think the wipers are just too big for the latches. I have an idea for a fix.
 
Stand by, @Jim; @Neal will be along shortly to sell you a dash cam! :ROFLMAO:

TJ
I have one in the Jeep and before we left I was going to move it to the RV. But the window in the RV is almost straight up/down and the suction cup mount wants to be mounted on a window that is sloped. So unfortunately, no dash cam when I needed it.
 

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