OUR EASTER – BOTH FIASCO & FANTASTIC!

Jules’ Journal: “CHIPS” to the Rescue!

By: Julianne Lillie

4/8/23 – Today was one we’ll always remember! It was extremely nerve-wrecking, exhausting, and even scary at times! It all started as a normal travel/school day. We pulled out of our Napa RV campground by 9am and headed towards Sanger, CA (near King’s Canyon National Park). When we were about 1 hour away from our campground, the road (Hwy 99) started to get rough! Asphalt buckled in places and potholes left and right which forced us to slow way down…however we must not have slowed down fast enough. We must have hit 1 or 2 potholes too hard as we were flagged down by another car to pull over. We checked back and sure enough we were smoking! Never a good sign – our hearts just sank!

We immediately pulled over to the shoulder, which unfortunately was super narrow. Cars & semi trucks were just buzzing us… traffic was thick! We quickly knew that this wasn’t a safe place to be pulled over, but unfortunately, there wasn’t any other option! Jason started off by calling 911 dispatch to see if they could send over a Cali Hwy Patrol (CHP, AKA: CHIPS!) squad car to help protect us a bit.

Here's our narrow shoulder:

Meanwhile I started looking up Trailer/Truck Tire repair companies near us, which was in Merced, CA on Hwy 99. The problem was it was the Saturday before Easter at 2:30pm and most all the roadside truck/trailer repair places were closed. I finally got ahold of one guy who was off today but said he could send someone over with a truck to help. (Thank you, Lord, for Sergio with Central Valley Truck Tires & Repair!)

The kids and I were all still seat belted in the truck’s cab and Jason managed to get out safely to start assessing the damage when CHP Officer Jason Schoonhoven showed up. (Jason’s are the BEST!) His squad car lights almost immediately started helping with the buzzing of traffic, and finally cars/trucks started to get over to give us some room!

Jason & Officer Jason took some photos of the damage and sent them to Sergio who was still working to get a guy out to us.

Turns out our shackles, hangar brackets, and new welds that we replaced at home over the Holiday break were all in good shape! This time, the issue was our leaf spring broke! Because the leaf spring broke, it caused our shackle to rotate which caused our tires to touch. Tires touching is obviously not good and they just locked up causing us to drag them behind us burning off the rubber tread… hence the smoke! Although the tires themselves were still holding good pressure (per our tire monitoring system), the tire tread on them looked shot!

So, we need a new leaf spring to replace the broken one and 2 new tires at the bare minimum. And here we are on the Saturday afternoon before Easter. It wasn’t looking like we were going to be able to make it to our destination tonight… or even before Monday when the trailer repair & tire shops open.

Officer Jason informed us that this was a rough part of town and asked if we had a handheld gun to protect us. We answered, “yes” and he said, “Good” and to keep it handy just in case. He warned us that not all roadside assistance guys are legit. As you can imagine, at this point I’m not feeling warm & fuzzy! The kids and I started texting our prayer warriors to start praying hard! And…all the more reason for me and the kids to stay in the cab and seat belted!

After about 1 hour of waiting, the roadside assistance guy that Sergio sent out shows up with his truck and starts getting to work pulling off one of the trailer tires. Officer Jason decided to stick around for added protection. (So thankful for him!) The roadside assistance guy didn’t speak much English, but they managed to get 1 tire off and chained the axle up. The idea was that we could “limp in” to a nearby RV Park & stay 2 nights until Monday when Central Valley Truck could get us in to make the necessary repairs.

Our originally planned RV park was still one hour away… that was much too far. I started researching and calling all the RV parks nearby. Every place was full due to the Easter weekend. Then officer Jason mentioned the Elks Lodge has an RV campground just 8 miles away. He made a phone call and got us a site for 2 nights! (Thank you, Jesus!)

At this point, the time had come to start “limping” or slowly rolling our way there. The issue was with only one tire on the driver’s side trailer axle, the trailer was leaning which caused our driver’s side rear jack to nearly touch the asphalt.

See back jack in photo below:

You can see the in the photo below how crooked our trailer is compared to the top of the kid's seats.

Definitely riding crooked!

So, we had to drive 2-8 mph (depending on the smoothness of the road) & drag/scrape our jack along the concrete/asphalt. We managed to slowly make our way to the nearest exit ramp where Jason & Officer Jason then tried to just remove that back jack. But unfortunately, the jack’s bolts were much too tight – it wasn’t budging! On we trudged at 2, 3, 4 mph. Officer Jason was escorting us from behind, watching to make sure the jack didn’t snap off and damage anything further. He escorted us all 8 miles going 2-8 mph which took us a little over an hour. We finally made it to the Elk’s RV Campground and thanked him tremendously – He was truly a God send! We are forever grateful for Officer Jason and the protection that he provided for our family!

We are also truly thankful for the Elk’s RV Campground for being so hospitable and accommodating even though we are not Elk’s Lodge members. And boy did we make the entrance crawling & loudly scraping our way into the campground with a police escort! Everyone in the campground was just gawking at us! Ha! We were the topic of campfire talk that Saturday night, I’m just sure of it!

We finally made it into a pull through site & miraculously were able to get level even missing that tire. All slides came out and we eagerly set up camp as by now it’s like 6:30pm. I wish we could say that we were now able to make dinner and relax… however wasn’t the case.

The Elk’s RV campground didn’t have sewer hook-ups (neither did our Napa campground the last 2 days) and our gray water holding tanks were both full. So here we are, needing to dump our gray water tanks, but unable to get to the dumping station to do so. For the first time in our RV life, we were in need of what RV’ers call a “sewer caddy” which is essentially a rolling tank on wheels. This would allow us to dump our gray water into this caddy which we could then roll over to the dump station & empty. But not just any store carries these contraptions. Jason located the nearest Camping World store which was one hour away… so off Jason went to buy a sewer caddy.

Meanwhile, I worked on laundry at the laundry facility in the campground. Again, since we didn’t have sewer hook ups at the Napa campground, I wasn’t able to do my one daily load of laundry to stay caught up. I was at least 2 days backed up! So, I just made trips back & forth from our camper to their onsite laundry facility which was actually quite nice! Ja & I also talked on the phone about rearranging the sightseeing schedule now that we needed Monday for repairing the RV.

You see, the most recent plan was to have Easter Sunday be a “down day” at the camper to watch church online and do traditional “Eastery” things in the RV like making Easter cookies and dying Easter eggs. And then Monday we were going to do a day trip to Yosemite National Park and Tuesday we were going to do a day trip to Kings Canyon National Park. After discussing, we decided to swap Sunday & Monday. So now, Easter Sunday = Yosemite and Mon = RV day to fix & do “Eastery” things if we can. The only problem with that is Yosemite & Kings Canyon require tire chains for all vehicles this time of year. We had already ordered Jason’s special tire sized chains on Amazon and they were delivered yesterday to the RV campground we were SUPPOSE to be staying at tonight. Yeah, I know… such a tangled mess! But there is some good news! The RV Park we were supposed to be staying at was only 15 minutes from the Camping World that Jason was heading for. So, Jason called them and they were able to meet him, open up the office, & let him pick up his super heavy tire chain package! (Praise the Lord!). He then drove back 1 hour to the RV with our new sewer caddy & tire chains rolling in as our knight in shining armor!

At this point I had finished up school with the kids, prepped for the next school day, finished all the laundry, fed dinner to Jaycie, and had Jett shower! When Jason returned, the 3 of us ate dinner. Then while I did dishes, Jason started emptying our gray water tanks using the new sewer caddy. He had to do this before the rest of us could shower since we were full full! It took him 4 round trips… 2 full caddy trips per each of our gray water tanks. Finally finished at 10pm! Jaycie quickly showered, then we put kids to bed. We showered, then finally our turn for lights out!

Man, what a tough day! But so thankful for our prayer warriors who prayed us through it! And extremely thankful for Officer Jason who was a Godsend and went above and beyond to make sure we arrived safe & sound to the RV park! Also thankful for Sergio & his roadside crew for getting us mobile enough to reach the campground. And thankful for the Elks RV Park who accommodated us even though we aren’t Elks Lodge members! This day is proof that there are still good people on this Earth… and even in California! Now… fast forward to Monday… yes, the drama continues!

4/10/23 – Knowing we only had 1 day to get this RV repaired and in tip-top shape, Jason woke up early so he could be making phone calls by 8am. The rest of us got around and we were ready by 9am. I started on laundry and boiling eggs for our Easter egg dying. I then checked in with Jason and learned it wasn’t going so well. Here it is already 10am and no sign of the work crew to our RV yet. And he was having trouble finding our special 14 ply tires. Jason and his dad were researching other reputable brands to see if any others were comparable. They thought they had found a brand & Jason was going to start calling around again to see if this one was in stock.

Knowing there was no way we could be out of our site by 11am, I talked with the campground host and was able to extend our stay 2 more nights. I also called our other campground and cancelled those 2 nights. I then finished up laundry and Easter Eggs were ready for dying! So, the kids got to work!

About 11:30am the crew finally showed up despite Jason calling/texting them all morning. But we know “beggars can’t be choosers” and we were just thankful they were able to work us into their Monday schedule. The crew got to work replacing the broken leaf spring while we ate a quick lunch. Then, Jason drove 30 min away to pick up the two new 14-ply tires. The plan was for the crew to fix the leaf spring, Jason to pick up the new tires & bring them back to put on so we could be mobile enough to pull the trailer into their shop to do more work. Apparently the other 3 leaf springs were looking weak and should be replaced, too. This meant the kids and I needed to quickly finish & clean up Easter eggs, break down camp, and pull in all the slides by the time Jason made it back with the tires. We got to work and that’s exactly what we did! It wasn’t ideal, and certainly not fun, but necessary to avoid another “side of the road” fiasco in the future! Here's our finished eggs:

And here's the trailer with both tires off:

Once the crew got the two new tires on and Jason hooked up the trailer, we slowly made our way to the truck repair shop pulling the trailer… trying our very best to avoid any potholes along the way. When we pulled in, they made us back into a holding spot until a bay opened. We waited for about 25-30 minutes and backed into a bay around 3:30pm. They started working on replacing the other 3 leaf springs.

Jason was supervising, like he does, and noticed that the new leaf springs were an inch bigger than our original leaf springs, so he pointed that out to Sergio. You can tell in the photo the new one (underneath) is slightly longer than the old rusty one (on top).

Sergio spoke to the boss man, and they discussed in Spanish and ended up telling Jason they didn’t have our original size (25 in) and only had the 26 in leaf springs to use. Sergio said it would be okay and if anything, it would cause our rear end of the trailer to ride a bit higher which would make us a bit more level. So, we decided to go that route and replace them all with the 26 in. leaf springs.

Another thing we noticed on our ride to the shop was that the new tires were riding slightly higher than the 2 old ones causing our trailer to be slightly crooked when towing. We also discussed that issue with Sergio and the decision was to split the tires up and put the new tires at the rear and the old tires in front. Again, this should also help us ride a bit more level.

After sitting in the truck with the kids for nearly 3 hours, finally at 6pm we were all fixed up and ready to pull out! However, when Jason tried to retract his jacks, they wouldn’t come up. He started to get his tools out to start troubleshooting. 10 minutes passed and when I caught a glimpse of him in the mirror, he just looked so frustrated and exhausted.

I alerted our prayer warriors once I saw his face and defeated posture! I then got out of the truck to see if I could help at all. He had me climb into the RV and showed me the control panel for our electrical leveling system that controls the jacks. He showed me the error message and I started looking it up online to see if I could find out what it means.

I then touched the “okay” button on the screen and somehow it progressed to the raise/lower screen that he was needing. I called him over and he was then finally able to raise the jacks. For whatever reason, today I must have had the magic touch! I think it was my prayer warriors that prayed me up! Hallelujah, we got the jacks up and were pulling around to the front for the boss man to inspect the trailer in motion. He evaluated it and said it was NO good. The longer leaf springs are causing our tires to be too close together. Jason couldn’t even fit his finger in between the tires. Not good at all... you can see how close the tires are in the photo below.

So here we are at 6:30pm having to re-back into the bay. They ended up taking the two front new 26 in. leaf springs off and putting the old 25 in. leaf springs back on. They left the two 26 in. leaf springs on the rear axle. Another 1.5 hours later, we rolled out of the bay again for another test. This time we got the thumbs up as the wheels were further apart. We paid Sergio a hefty bill and off we headed back to the campground.

We pulled back into the Elks RV Park at 8pm and our spirited neighbors cheered for us as we made it back! We got to work re-setting up our camp and by 9pm were eating leftovers for dinner. Showers & bed for all of us! We were filthy & just exhausted.

We’re not thrilled with the outcome of still having 2 new but larger leaf springs with 2 older leaf springs in place. But unfortunately, it’s the best we could do with our limited resources in this area. We’re thinking this will be a temporary fix and we’ll look at doing a more permanent fix later. Thankful to be mobile again! And now fast forward to Tuesday... the saga continues...

4/11/23: After visiting King’s Canyon on a day trip, we were feeling very unsettled with our trailer’s suspension knowing we had a 6-hour drive the next day to Reno, NV. Jason and I dropped the kids off at the RV after the day’s fun and decided to head to a trailer parts store to see if we could purchase 4 correctly sized leaf springs, even if just to have on hand if something goes wrong. We ended up finding 4 correctly sized leaf springs that were also “beefed-up” and could handle heavier loads which I’m sure we probably are! So, we purchased them!

We also found an RV repair guy (Anthony Jones) who specializes in RV suspension repairs, and we got him lined up for first thing in the morning. We are feeling much better about this decision, so fast forward to Wednesday…

4/12/23 (AKA: Today): We had a super early morning, packed up camp, dumped our sewer, and were pulling out of the campground by 7:40am. This meant we were pulling into the RV repair shop right at 8:00am on the nose. We unhooked the trailer, signed the papers, and the Jones’ brothers got to work! Meanwhile I had a work call that I took from the truck and the kids worked on their folder schoolwork. Once I was done with my call, we took a quick break to get donuts and run some errands. We picked up another bolt that the Jones’ brothers were needing because they broke one of ours. When we came back with the new bolt, they finished up the repairs! We checked and the wheels are further apart, and the equalizer looks much happier as there’s more room between them and the shackles!

We got the thumbs up that we were good to go! Praise the Lord & thank you for the Jones’ brothers in Merced, CA! We paid another hefty bill and then we were pulling out by 11:00am headed to Reno, NV! We are feeling so much better about our crazy life on the road knowing that we now have all new correctly sized leaf springs! Thank you, Lord, for sending the right people to us when we needed them and for your sovereign guidance & protection. The 4Js are back on the road again!!!! Hallelujah!!!

Now, for the FANTASTIC part of our Easter...

Jaycie’s Bunny Hoppin’ News: Yosemite National Park!

By: Jaycie Lillie, 4/9/23

Yosemite National Park was so beautiful! I brought my Sony camera and took some photos! I liked the seeing the waterfalls, but I didn’t like waking up early.

It was Easter Sunday, so we watched church online in the truck on the way there. On the way there we already saw so many waterfalls!

We first went to the Visitor’s Center to get our Jr. Ranger booklets. Then we also explored the exhibits, watched the park video, and enjoyed the Ansel Adams Art Gallery.

We had a picnic overlooking Halfdome while we finished our Jr Ranger booklets.

On the way back we ended up running into a bobcat!

When we returned to the Visitor Center the line was forever long to talk with a Park Ranger. So instead, we went next door to get a snack!

Then we went back to the line, took our oath, and earned our 98th Jr Ranger badge.

Then we went on a hike to Lower Yosemite Falls which was roaring!

Here are some of my photos I took with my Sony camera of Yosemite’s beauty:

Thanks for reading!

Jett’s Wild Flight: Catching Air in King's Canyon National Park!

By: Jett Lillie, 4/11/23

We arrived and were welcomed to King’s Canyon National Park by an “igloo-ified” Visitor Center and bucket loads of snow!

Visitor Center - you can see the top of the roof sticking out of the snow:

Entrance to the Visitor Center:

After the tunnel on the porch of the Visitor Center:

We earned our 99th Jr Ranger badge and started on a hike to the General Grant tree.

We hiked in snow, water, and on asphalt to get to the 2nd tallest tree in the world, the General Grant Sequoia tree. We took some pictures.

We also took some pictures by the General Robert E. Lee tree. These trees were huge!

We also climbed into a fallen, hollow giant sequoia tree that acted as a short cut tunnel to the other side of the loop trail. It was so cool!

We then ate a picnic lunch in an ice cave… literally.

Then some guy named Kyle (from Santa Barbara) asked Jaycie and I if we wanted to sled, and of course I was up for the challenge! So I geared up as if I was in a zombie apocalypse, and I was ready! My first take went perfectly....

...but my second run I hit a bump and went off track. I went flying and landed flat on the asphalt and I said, “OOOOOH NOOOO!” But I was fine and Kyle said, “Nice Air!”

King’s Canyon National Park was fun!