Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men…

No, we did not suffer another hail tornado (as the thumbnail picture for this post might suggest) but we are still dealing with the ramifications.

As Lauren mentioned in her most recent post, we’re finally back out on the road, and we have a busy travel season planned for 2025.

Or at least we did until we got to Tucson.  But more on that, later.

As for our first travel weekend of 2025, it went very smoothly.  We got the 5th wheel off the property and down the dirt roads without any major issues and, other than leaving Las Cruces super early on Sunday morning to avoid a windstorm, the rest of the weekend travels were equally without issue.  We made it to Tucson safe and sound by about 3pm Sunday afternoon.

On Monday we took the truck over to a shop for an inspection on what it would take to finally get the hail damage fixed.  Our original plan was to stay in Tucson for about a month to give us enough time for those repairs and then we were going to leave town in April for California and the rest of the summer trip up the west coast.

Well, that was the plan.  The diagnosis we got at the truck repair shop was that it will need to have a new roof shipped from Dodge/Ram and that part is on a minimum 45-day back-order wait and then they’ll need at least 2-3 weeks to get the work done after the parts come in.  And then they scared us saying the minimum 45-day wait for the roof could stretch into months (they said they had one car at their shop for 9 months waiting for a back-ordered part to arrive).

So, it looks like we’ll be staying in Tucson for at least March and April, and possibly into May and beyond depending on when the roof is able to ship to us.  Obviously, that is going to have an impact on our 2025 travel plans.  I have already cancelled our reservation at Joshua Tree National Park in April, and I’d say all the stops after that are probably at risk as well.

We need to get the hail damage taken care of and soon (it’s been almost 6 months since the hailstorm) so we don’t have too many realistic options other than sticking it out but, hopefully, the part will arrive as close to 45 days as possible, and we’ll be able to get back on the road before too long.  We’d really like to be able make at least some of our planned stops and visits this summer, especially our first return trip to Oregon.

That’s the bad news, but it could have been worse.  On the positive side:

• We get to keep the truck until the parts come in, so we won’t be without a vehicle the whole time we’re in Tucson.

• The KOA has been exceptionally accommodating and was able to block out our spot for the foreseeable future, so we won’t have to move. And they switched us over to their monthly rate which will save us a bunch of money.

• This KOA is also the most “resort-like” place we stay at, and it has a lot of amenities to keep us entertained.  Things like a restaurant on-site, swimming pool and hot tub, tennis/pickle ball courts, mini-golf, game room, laundry, exercise room, and a mail room for receiving deliveries.

• Tucson, in general, is pretty nice in March/April/May, weather-wise.

• And, most importantly, we’ll finally be done with our hail damage repairs.

All in all, if we had to stay anywhere for an extended period to get repairs done (outside of on our property or staying with family), we could have done much worse than the Tucson KOA in Spring.