Awnings & Wind
We were just relaxing at our site at Robert Treman SP when I noticed the wind was just started to buffet our awning. Suddenly, an isolated gust of wind flipped our side awning over the top of our RV, ripping the top anchor bolts right out of the RV. Bollocks. Fellow RVers ran over to help us get it back over to the correct side and we were able to roll it back up and lock down the feet at the bottom. For a few minutes, it looked like a storm was about to whip up – I was just coming outside to lock it down when it blew off, and then the storm never hit and was gone. Bizarre.

So the arms were a bit warped on one side and we spent some time straightening bent metal and reassembling everything. We screwed the bolts back in but since they had ripped out, they wouldn’t grab. Feeling this was a risk for driving home, James popped out on the motorcycle to the nearby Lowes for wood filler and bigger bolts. The wood filler worked well but the bigger bolts wouldn’t fit through the metal bracket. Old bolts should be fine once the filler hardens – apparently I have to redrill the holes now but that is no trouble since I have a drill. :o) We may need to replace a few metal parts and have the tension recranked so it will wind up on it’s own again. Hopefully it will be mostly okay without spending too much money.
Lesson learned is that we shouldn’t take both awning arms off the RV and put them on the ground as there is nothing but gravity holding them down. We noticed other campers had pinned theirs down – probably because they saw what happened to us! Lol! James likes to unhitch the awning arms from the RV because they get in the way to walk around – so this was a good learning experience for both of us to be cautious about this. Fortunately, the antenna was not up when the awning flipped over – if it had been, it would have been damaged for sure so we were lucky on that point.

Heading Home
James left this morning to go back home. The heat broke with yesterday’s evening rains and this morning it is only 10 C – high is 15 C – I don’t mind. They have a good trail here Sadie and I will tackle after lunch and run the genny this evening to try to burn off the last of the old gas and charge back up – cloudly today. I did some research and decided to stay at casino Niagara tomorrow night – I don’t want to go to a HH because I have to cross the border and don’t want more food/alcohol to bring. Also this way, we can add a casino to our list of places we have stayed on this trip!
