What should have been a nice easy drive from St. Louis turned into a bit more than expected. Yes, that is our solar panel hanging off the side of the roof.
It always seems to be a rainy miserable day when things go wrong on the bus. We pulled over on the side of the interstate to take a look at what broke. As Scott was on the very slippery roof, trucks were flying past, I was trying to stay calm. Scott is much, much better at staying cool under pressure than I am. He somehow managed to secure the panel to the roof with a tow strap & zip ties we had in our emergency kit until we could very slowly make our way to a truck stop to repair it.
Once we got to the truck stop, he made a mad dash to the only hardware store in miles to get there before they closed for the day. He brought back punched angle iron which he used to attach to the side of the solar panels and to the bracket that was on the bus. Turns out the lovely (heavy sarcasm) people that built our bus used the brackets that came with the panels which were rated for house roofs. They could not handle the wind generated going down the highway. The actual frame attached to our bus is quite study so he just added more reinforced pieces to ensure it won’t come off again!
Thankfully, we had all the tools on the bus that we needed to fabricate the new brackets including a angle grinder which I thought was ridiculous to bring. We also have portable saw horses which again I never thought we would use on the road. Glad Scott is a tool packrat!
Unfortunately, we also realized our generator needed service when I tried to turn it on in the truck stop parking lot. It turned on but started blinking that it needed serviced. Upon inspection, it seems we should have changed the oil 200 hours ago… I added that to the list of things to buy and started sourcing the materials to get that straightened out. It was a hot day and no generator meant no A/C either. I quickly found a campground to stay in for the night so we didn’t all die of heat exhaustion. We cooked some of our favorite smoked brats by the fire at the campground and then proceeded to bed as that was a very exhausting day!
The next day we proceeded to our originally reserved campground in Clarksville, TN at the Clarksville RV park.
While parked there, we also visited Nashville which was about an hour drive from the campground. We had some drinks in a real honky tonk, and rented some of our favorite electric scooters to see the rest of the city.
