We left Friday morning and headed down to Southern Fl. My husbands brother lives there and we do not get to see them. The last time we saw his brother was I think, 2006….My BIL, is an alcoholic and has spent many of the last several years living in the woods with his wife. Thankfully, the Lord has watched over him and his wife and they were living in a mobile home last we heard. We have never met my BIL’s wife, he married her after he moved back to FL after being here in SC with us and we have never been given any pictures from Tim’s parents to know what she looks like.
Since we were this close we wanted to go and see them if possible it was about an hour and a half out of our way. We started on our way and were driving down the freeway, about an hour and a half, when we hear somewhat of a loud noise but at the same time it felt like we drove over something yet there was nothing in front of us…we each look out our mirrors and could see rubber flying out the side…. The trailer had just blown a tire….now you’ll see in a little bit why this was all part of the Lord’s plan.
Tim and I get out to see how extensive the damage…it turns out the outer tread peeled off..so Tim gets out the jack to start getting out the spare…Tim’s dad had mentioned to make sure that the spare tire had air in it before we left SC…which he did check and did pump up….the way these things are stored is on a pulley system…you turn the handle and it lowers the tire down from under the trailer so you don’t have to take the tire down to put air in it, the valve is showing you just hook up and pump up…… So he gets the tire down by the pulley and you would not believe it….I wish I could have gotten a picture of the tire….it was sooooo falling apart, there were chunks of rubber missing from it…there was no way it could be used….evidently Tim’s parents had run into a problem on the road with the tire and had it replaced and just stored this one away and never replaced it…we had no idea it was bad…
However, thanks to technology…we had a GPS system with us and Tim’s IPad….with the GPS we figured out where the closest tire shop was and with the IPad we looked up the price of new tires at Wal-mart and then called a couple tire shops to find out how much to mount the new tire…we ended up getting two so we would have a decent spare if for some reason the other side would fail as well. The people at this hidden away tire shop, in the middle of a residential neighborhood were so nice and actually recognized our foreign trailer (made in Canada) and were surprised to see one…We were back on the road in about an hour’s time…..it could have been so much worse, but the Lord was watching over us!!
We finally arrived in the little mobile home park that we had the address from Tim’s mom….right before we pulled up to the trailer we had the address for I mentioned to my husband…..if this is not the current address I am going to be very disappointed and upset because your mom didn’t give us the new address…unfortunately, it is a repeating scenario…I guess on her part to try and have control of the family or what I am not sure, but she never willing gives us Tim's brothers address, just about every couple of months I have to double check and see if there is a new address…it is always possible and with his living in the woods for the last 2-3 years we never knew where he would get his mail. So we see the mobile home and there are no curtains and the inside looks pretty empty…we get out and my heart just sinks…here we have driven all this way and the address is not correct…it is obvious this place is abandoned or empty and has not been lived in.
We load up in the trailer and then Tim gets out and walks back to see if the Landlord is available. I see a lady walking towards us from the end of the road. I decided to ask this lady if she had any possible information as to where the tenants might have moved to. So I walked up to her and asked her if she knew Tim's brother (by name) and his wife's name that used to live here and where they might have moved? She responds….I’m that person…and kind of looks at me like who are you….and I said, I’m Melissa D…she says again..I’m that person…I said, I’m your Sister In Law and we gave each other a big hug….mean while I’m yelling back to Tim…hey honey, here’s your Sister-in-law!!
It turns out they had moved to the last mobile unit in the park because of plumbing issues! What is even more amazing is that she had been at the Library all morning, it was currently about 2pm and she kept hearing the Lord say to her, you need to go home, you need to go home! So she left and had only arrived home about 15 minutes prior to us getting there. So you see, if we hadn’t had the blowout on the freeway, we would have completely missed them, never known that they were still living in the vicinity, and would have been really really disappointed that we didn’t have the new address….
We were able to stay until about 3pm, unfortunately, we never did get to see Tim's brother, he had not made it home from work but it was wonderful to finally get a chance to meet his wife and for the children to meet their Aunt on their daddy's side for the first time.
We left southern Fl., and headed back North a short ways and then headed West straight across the state to Sarasota to meet up with Tim’s parents to go camping for the weekend. We ended up pulling in around 10pm because we hit the rush hour traffic. We stayed at Fun-N-Sun resort…it had a wonderful little pool area for children that was shallow, I think up to about 12 inches and then a huge Olympic size pool area for adults….there was an inflatable water slide of a hippo, but that was temporarily broken.
Most of the attendees were retired people and there were plenty of amenities to keep them entertained. We enjoyed a short/brief round of miniature golf, went to a wood-carving silent auction. They have two huge dog walking parks and well the list goes on and on….lol We would love to find this type of family atmosphere but that was geared to people a little closer to our age, someplace we could go back year after year…. This was nice to go to for late winter to get a bit of warm weather and it was nice to visit here with Tim’s parents as opposed to just sitting in their house which is what would have happened…this way we had our space, they were two spots away, they could get a break from the children…we shared the Saturday evening meal together, they brought their food over and we had ours so we had fellowship over food…. Overall, I would do that again, maybe even every February…lol
Here’s a few snapshots of the children….
This little guy looooovvvveeed the water and took right to it…..he would have played in here all day!
We left the campground Sunday morning and made a quick, half hour drive out to the Coast….we were not going to come this far and not show the children the beach of the Gulf Coast!!! And might I say it was beautiful….the children really enjoyed playing in the water even though it was still cold….I couldn’t stay in too long the hives started getting me but it was sooo pretty!!
We left Sarasota and headed back up towards Orange Park, Fl. Our drive up North was going pretty well….it seemed a little windy that day and we noticed a few wiggles with the trailer but neither one of us mentioned it out loud….We were traveling behind a semi-truck and just casually driving along…Tim decided to give his brother a call since we had missed him on Friday, and just wanted to check in. Well Tim is talking to his brother and the semi was going a little slower so Tim pulled around the semi truck and we made the pass back into the front of the semi truck….it must have sucked the air away from us that we were traveling in….something invisible you can’t see but can feel it has happened…. the trailer started to fishtail….a little and then more and more…Tim passed the phone to me, I said hello and dropped the phone to my lap and told the children to hold on repeatedly… the trailer was swinging back and forth so much, I was pretty much petrified…. thankfully Tim was able to get it to the side of the road and the change of pavement made it grip and it was saved…..we had to have been on the side of the road for a good minute before the semi truck passed us….he backed so far off, he had to have been almost stopped so that he would not be involved in a wreck with us!!! Now can I just say that growing up camping my dad always always used the sway bars, there was never a time we didn’t…now I am not sure what the thought process is or was…but Tim only used them sometimes….I sometimes think they think the truck is large enough and that won’t happen, etc…. so I kindly said….you know honey, I would really feel much more comfortable if we always had the sway bars on…..he responded….I will always use them from now on…..sigh……
So we continued North, We were going to spend the night at his parents house and use the driveway. Tim wanted to go to his Best friends house and help him out with his television remote….we drove in about 8:30 in the evening, it took until about 9pm before Tim left and got going…he did not get back until about 1:30am….I was way too tired to go and with the children being tired as well we stayed behind.
We got up the next morning and headed for home, we were watching the weather on the IPad and new that rain was coming in or rather we were heading into it about an hour away from our house…we were hoping we would miss it….not a chance! It started to rain and we could see they were big drops…a mile down the road we pulled into a covered gas station and ran out to the trailer and closed all the windows…lol…it was going to be a bad storm…well we kept driving, the sky was dark gray and pretty soon it was black, daylight was gone….The rain was coming down and there were gusts we saw and felt and looked on the Ipad up to 40mph…. and then we couldn’t see at all in front of us….literally the front end of the truck was not visible… the wind was blowing the rain horizontal…we were going less than 20 mph and we ended up stopping on the road…I said to put the hazards on so anyone coming behind us would see us hopefully on the road…. We inched along, literally ever so slowly looking for someplace to pull off…praise God there was a storage shed and what we hoped was a driveway….we pulled down and sat there and waited the storm out for about 10 minutes. We saw one car in that time go by.
After waiting we got back on the road in the rain but at least we could see the road now and where we were going and went to the next town and stopped for food hoping to let the rest of the storm pass…
We came pretty close and I can tell you, I was sure glad when we finally pulled into our driveway that night!!!
Hope you Enjoyed.
