Major Problems As We Try To Leave Missouri

7-11-09
It was about 6:00 in the morning and we were asleep in bed when a typical Missouri storm came out of nowhere. We woke to the sound of large hail hitting the roof and the wind whipping around our awning. Shae jumped out of bed, slipped on some clothes, and ran to put the awning in . In that short amount of time he was too late. The wind had bent the frame of the awning and ripped the material part of the awning from the camper. There was no hope of fixing it, so much hardware was bent and broken. Cody got up and went out to see what had happened and if he could help Shae. The guys were checking this out and lighting was striking all around us. I asked them to come inside and wait until morning to fix it, but you know them, they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do, so they stayed out in the lightning storm. Later on that morning, Shae looked over the awning and decided that we needed to take it off because it would not ride well down the road like it was. He got up on the roof to reach the higher parts of the hardware and Cody stood below holding on to one of the poles. When Shae disconnected one side of the awning it fell and hit the side of our van. Thank goodness it hit the passenger side mirror. The mirror pushed into the side of the door and the awning slide down the door and left a nice dent and scraped the paint all the way down to the metal. In all it’s about 2,000 dollars worth of damage. Shae came in and told me about the awning falling down on the van and we both just busted out laughing. What else could we do but laugh? Shae had enough forethought to take pictures of the mangled awning against the van before putting it up so maybe the insurance will cover it. I told Shae maybe we should stay home the rest of the day and not do anything so nothing else would break. But, we decided to try to leave..
Sheri